Tokyo Xtreme Racer to go.
I was looking for a restart in the franchise. Something completely different and brand new was what this franchise needed to compete against the big boys. What I got upon powering up my PSP was a strategy racing game hybrid that initially puzzled me. There is no free roam in Street Supremacy. You pick your opponent and then choose where you want to race them. You race the same way as before. You each get Street Fighter style health bars loaded with Spirit Points (SP) and try to out run and out drive the opponent so that they lose all their points. This can be accomplished by simply driving faster and the further away, the more points are taken off, by running into the walls causing you to lose points, or by hitting other cars. This is a different take on racing and works very well.
The difference in this version is now the highways of Tokyo are divided into sections controlled by rival gangs. You pick a starting faction and then you can rise up the ranks to eventually take over the gang, and eventually the entire map. The gangs attack each other for dominance and to take points from the rivals to add to your territory. Initially, (and for quite a while) you are only in the gang and have very little control over what it does. You are merely a participant. When you become the leader of the gang, you can then start to take territory, or protect if need be and the game becomes a very respectable strategy where you match your strengths and weaknesses against your opponent’s and try to fill the board. You will come into contact with rival bosses as well as Wanderers who don’t have a faction, but are extremely fierce.
The game wouldn’t be a racing game without the cars and boy does this game have them. They are all fully licensed and feature great detail to not only the exterior and all of the millions of parts you can put on it, but also to the details under the hood. You can customize your car to extreme limits and make it your own. That’s where most of the fun lies. If you are a gear head, then you will love it.
The great car details and the pretty decent looking city come at a price. The load times are very long. It can upwards of 30 seconds to load a race, and the race may only last 20 seconds depending on the match up. Also the menus are very laggy and it can take forever to load cars in the car shops. The frame rate on the other hand is pretty good, with only the occasional dip, but it is mostly at a steady 30 frames per second clip.
The cars sound pretty good, a little whiny, but it’s the same as the console versions so there are no complaints there. The music is also the same as the console. Mostly throwaway, but the battle music is quite nice.
On the whole, if you are looking for a portable Tokyo Xtreme Racer, then this is your game. Buy it now. If on the off chance you aren’t then you will an average street racer, with a few strategy elements thrown in. Unfortunately, the fans of the series and the gear heads are the only ones that will get great satisfaction from this game and that is how I am going to rate it. As a fan of the series, because that is what I am. Not the best in the series (that my friends is Tokyo Xtreme Racer 0) but a nice edition with a few extra marks for being protable.