A highly polished game that simply requires a taste for bike physics and a tolerance for lots and lots of practice.
The name Extreme G 3 brings thoughts of Snoop Dogg in his own "Xtrizzle" Sporting event. It also brings me thoughts of the Gamecube's first lightning fast racer, a game that I saw at first as a placeholder until F-Zero came along. Think about that -- a next-gen Acclaim game that's actually good enough for me to buy! (Just kidding, Carrie G.!) When I read good reviews and heard impressions about its relentless pursuit for the sensation of speed, I supposed to myself that it deserved a shot. After all, it was also sitting at reduced price in Circuit City.
Extreme G 3 -- or XG3 for short -- captures a sense of style more akin to the WipeOut series than F-Zero. The rides are futuristic "magnetic" motorbikes. The soundtrack is all electronica and the visuals create a sleek, futuristic environment -- a less colorful but smoother looking world than F-Zero. I'll say right now that Extreme G 3 served its purpose as an F-Zero GX placeholder very well, but that's aboutall. Not that this is a bad thing: for the year or so that I've played it, on and off, Extreme G 3 does indeed bring the talked-about speed demon thrills that I expected. It's just that, for me, now that F-Zero GX is here this game just seems to fall to the wayside.
I suppose that, to talk about the speed, I should talk about aesthetics first since they do play an integral role in creating that sense of speed. The graphics are absolutey beautiful, and they run at a mostly persistent 60 frames per second. The tracks are designed with many loops, hills, dips and swerves, and the environments around the tracks vary between neon-lit cities and living, breathing forests. One of the most beautiful levels, Crystalaria, is more or less a large, shiny ice sculpture of caverns and glaciers. The fly-bys of each stage before the races are worth sitting through since the environments are breathtaking, and watching them go by at blazing speed just gives you that sense of just BLAZING through the landscape. Further, when you break the sound barrier by achieving a certain speed, the whole screen blurs and fish-eyes out as the sound drops out. Add to that weather effects that actually spatter against the camera and you can see that XG3 does its job extremely well graphically in giving a sense of speed.
Sound-wise, well, I already mentioned the sound dropping out when you break the sound barrier. It's quite surreal to hurtle down a track without hearing a thing, then hearing the sound slowly seep back in as you reach normal speeds again. Imagine coming out of bullet time in Max Payne -- that's the kind of effect you get. When the sound IS on, the vicious roar of the motorbike engines is enhanced by a great Doppler effect as you pass by or are passed by rivals. The music further adds to this sensation. The music tracks are all subtle, with constant bass beats that seem to parallel the unwavering framerate, and are so fitting that even though I don't listen to electronica I couldn't keep myself from bobbing my head as I thundered through courses.
The aesthetic job for the game's speed is complemented in this sense by good gameplay elements. Because the game is centered around bikes rather than fully-sized vehicles, all the tracks are extremely forward-oriented. You won't find any F-Zero-esque, challenging sharp turns at 90 degrees, which naturally implies that you won't be doing any powerslides. Constantly zooming forward, with no such turns, is what keeps the sense of speed going in this game. Even in something like F-Zero, where you have to brake or power slide for turns, you find yourself stopping for a beat. If you're an XG3 pro, there is no such stopping by your own volition (i.e. if you can avoid getting hit). It's go time, all the time.
Here, then, lies a bit of my problem with the game. I like turns like that. I like having to stop and go at the drop of a dime -- it forces me to develop more technique. Going straight all the time is surely thrilling -- but I like some hurdles in the action that require me to adjust my reflexes. Most of the challenges in the courses themselves manifest in squiggly turns that, at high speeds, are indeed refreshingly annoying (yes, sometimes annoying is good), but in no way as thumb blistering yet satisfying as a 90 degree powerslide. Because horizontal movement is more limited than in other racers due again to the bike nature (another small, nitpicky problem I had), these turns are challenging if you aren't skilled with weight-shifting.
The weight-shifting is obviously left and right, but you can use the analog stick to shift weight forward and backwards. Going down a hill, you'll want to lean forward for MAD speed increases, and going up one you want to ease up by pressing back. Unfortunately because I'm a retard, I often found myself constantly leaning forward on the stick, even when on flat terrain, so making a squiggly turn would be challenging because I had my thumb stuck on "up."
The game seems to place a high emphasis on weaponry. I would have preferred to combat others with my bike physically, rather than firing at them at high speeds. The inclusion, while not an afterthought, sometimes does feel like one; I can go the whole race without firing my gun because I'm too focused on getting ahead in the race. Some of the weapons are certainly interesting, like the shield-drain which syphons your opponents' shield energy into your bike (if you can get a grip on them) and the mines, which litter the area behind you with tiny little bombs that can bring whoever's behind you to a screeching halt. But because I mainly enjoyed this game for the pure speed thrills, I would have rather done away with the bombs and guns and such and concentrated on blazing ahead. It's also just another annoying thing to keep track of, attempting to recharge your ammunition on ammo recharge strips while trying not to crash into the wall. Leave the weapons to kart racers, I say. I guess it does even the playing field, though, and given the AI in this game, perhaps it was necessary to include weapons.
Oh man, the AI. Jeez. I'm actually not complaining about the AI -- in fact, I thought it was the perfect blend of challenging and lenient. The computer-controlled bikes act like they belong in the league. They're smart, they know how to race. It's not so extreme that it appears they cheat their way around corners (wait, there are none) and such. They're just good. But so are you, and you can overtake them if you're good as well, by employing good boosting techniques.
As boosting drains your shields, you need to ration it out so that you have enough to reach the next shield-recharging strip and come away from them with a decent amount. What I would usually do, instead of only jamming on the boost during a straightaway, was to lightly tap on the boost (often to the beat of the music) during the entire race. Unless I got crammed with a mine, it kept my speed at a constant level so that when I did jam on the boost on a straightaway, I would (a) only have to press it for a short while rather than holding it and (2) be able to achieve sound-barrier-breaking speed more easily. But the AI certainly keeps this in mind, and I would often find myself in the middle of the pack during the higher speed-class leagues and either break out in the end or fall dreadfully behind due to some boneheaded error. Like I said, these guys are good. The game does a good job of keeping things balanced though; never pushovers, with enough practice you'll still be able to find away around the AI, and fortunately the course progression allows for 4th place finishes at some points. It's based on a grand-prix type format, but instead of using points it uses the amount of money you've earned from races and time trials. Meaning, if you need lots of dough to advance to the next set of courses, and you need to finish really well, you can do a time trial or two to try to get that earned total up to lighten the pressure on you.
Unfortunately it all compounds between the different speed classes, so if you futz up the entire slower two speed classes, the next two will be murderous. Even races themselves are murderous, nevermind an entire speed class. For instance, in one set of three, I finished the first race in 5th. Decent finish. I finished the second race 8th. Terrible. The third race, then, required me to finish at least in fourth to advance to the next speed class. It took me an hour of retrying to achieve this. THEN, when I finally hit the next speed class, I was required to finish like, 5th or something, in the FIRST RACE just to advance to the second. Brutal.
And that, my friends, is the final problem -- advancing through the game reliably. The best races truly are the last ones, and the best sensation is in the higher speed classes, when you blaze at sound-barrier levels far more often. If your skills just don't cut it, you will never see this. Sure, it's only a speed class change, and you do see all the levels if you can finish the slowest class. But they're not the same when going at 300 as opposed to, oh, say 750. In fact I don't ever recall breaking the sound barrier until halfway to three-quarters through the second speed class, after I had spent money to buy the fastest engine available in that speed class. Thank goodness for the balanced AI, then. (Interestingly enough, GameSpot claims that there are holes in the AI. I'd actually like to find these holes so I can beat the game more easily but I no longer own the game.)
As far as value goes, this game is incredibly polished in its production. It hardly seems like just some techno, bikes and tracks thrown together in a mishmash - everything works together pretty nicely for the most part. However you can't play any races in a league once you beat said league, which is a real downer.
All of your racing maps out beautifully on the Gamecube controller though, whether you like the game or not. The big fat A button serves incredibly well as the acceleration, because you can reach all the other functions -- brake (B), weapon (Y), boost (X), and switch weapons (Z) without a hitch. Your thumb easily slides to the three face buttons without having to let up on the gas, and your index finger is obviously always free to cycle through your weapons. In the heat of a sound-barrier breaking race, fumbling with the controller is never a good thing, but thankfully this should never happen in XG3.
Ultimately, F-Zero provides the same level of speed -- albeit with 90 degree turns -- that this game does, and is in general more fun because of the looser vehicle controls (not on a motorbike there). What I'm saying though should not be mistaken with putting down XG3 -- far from it. XG3 is a different type of racer since it uses motorbikes and different tracks, so naturally it controls differently. I simply prefer F-Zero more. But I can't say that I regret buying this title. In fact, I'd swing the other way and say that if you're a speed racing fan, you owe it to yourself to at least rent this for the pure thrill. XG3 has flaws that irked me, but it also does the most important things -- speed and balance -- very well. What you end up with a highly polished game that simply requires a taste for bike physics and a tolerance for lots and lots of practice.