Michael Bay: The Racing Game Starring: Broken Drifting (ish)
In fact this could have quite easily been called "Michael Bay: The Racing Game" It's got it all! It's dumb, buildings collapse, debris flies, cars crash, cheesy sunset lit tracks, ott music, perfect!
The game looks fantastic as well, crisp, fast, smooth. All good so far. Ok on to the PROBLEMS!
Badly balanced AI drivers... you can't catch them easily, but 2 seconds after you wreck them they catch you, I see why the developers did it to make it thrilling to the end, but it needs fine tuning as the way it is now is simply....unfair... especially with the below problems..
Drifting is...... well.... Broken. Sort of. If you execute a perfect drift, one where you don't bounce off a wall, which is very difficult to do considering the verrrry slidey physics, you have to shed so much speed, that the AI will catch you/pass you, as they seem to suffer from no such problems. So you end up driving badly and bouncing off the walls, which also slows you down, less than drifting, much more than the AI drivers, again, you get passed, and since you haven't been drifting no powerplays.
Don't get me wrong, you still can win, by cleverly blasting people wth roadside hazards at the right time, but essentially driving badly all the time is not fun to me.
This becomes so apparent with the Detonator Timetrial modes, if you drift and take corners well you fail, if you clatter your way around not braking and bouncing off walls, you win. Not good.
Collision detection is annoyingly hit and miss, one stack into a wall sees you bounce harmlessly off the wall, whereas suddenly the same move can cause you to crash, and the 3mph headon, IE no matter what speed you're going if you tap the front bumper into the wall... boom....GRRRR
The Heli attack mode can be very annoying, the attacks are often centred on too thin a section of track, so ducking between them (your car will be either too heavy or too drifty) becomes nigh on impossible. And why the developer made the cars able to take multiple hits, when 9 out of 10 times the blast fires you into the next blast, then the next and you as the player can't do anything is beyond me.
Truck survival? More fun, due to some nice wide tracks so you can finally pull massive satisfying drifts, but sometimes when exploding barrels fly at you they cant be seen due to debris or cars in the way, and occasionally you are cornered by 2 or more without sufficient gap to aim for..... later on it gets very bad, as the barrel patterns become almost unavoidable, due to an unwanted drift, unresponsive car, or again, no gap big enough to get through .
Also some small points, the cars that supposedly have a good drift rating...err...don't, and the non drifty cars slide all the time, even in a straight line sometimes! Why are better cars no more use on earlier events.... surely that's the point of better cars no?
Also... no speedometer! The screen is so full of effects to make you feel like you are going fast, sometimes you just cant tell how much speed a collision or bad drift has lost you..... not essential I know, but helps when drifts and wall thumps feel so inconsistent.
Don't get me wrong, all these modes can be great fun and extremely satisfying when you beat them, but the fact that it feels like the game is cheating you, rather than your own screw up kinda ruins it for me.
Multiplayer solves some issues as human players are governed by the same rules as you, and they get slowed just as much..... I just wish it played as polished as it looks and sounds. I hope a sequel does... although given the fact it's in the bargain bin already kind of makes me doubt that we'll see SS2.