Originally posted on Bebo, 6/9/09
To not sound like an arrogant twat, driving games have always been something of a speciality of mine. The lovely effect of going round a track in a vehicle, up against nothing more than yourself, striving for perfection in everything. From the back of MS: PR, we see words and phrases like "RIP IT UP!" "brutal off-road racing," "dangerous and unpredictable," "rampage," "devastating," and "reckless fun," you know you'll be getting nothing like that. Point down immediately, but maybe we'll get some fun destroying some cars. And hey, it works! Up to a point. When you're in a car, which is bigger than the car (or bike) next to you, and you slam into them, either hitting them into a rock, or hitting them off a cliff, it excites that part of the brain that gets off on watching Crash on Dave, it puts a smile on your face. Especially the tremendous crunching noise you get when you hit a guy off a bike when you're in a monster truck. And run him over in it. THAT I can get on board with. What does rather get wearing is the attempts to make this go further. Speed events for instance are utterly impossible apart from the first one you unlock, Eliminator events, where the car at the back gets blown up every 15 seconds rather depends on the route you take rather than any sort of driving ability and then the 4 tracks that get recycled with different names/scenery, which results in something which is recduced to only the crashes being the thing that keeps you playing.
The crashes are realistic, to give it credit, and it has an utterly shite photo mode, to take the credit right back again. If something's happened I want to take a picture of, I will not be pausing the game at the exact second it happens, so not having a rewind feature of some sort makes the photo mode redundant. Meaning your landing on a guys head in a monster truck will just bypass you, and the opportunity is gone.
As for the vehicles you can go in, 8 classes, a bike, a quad bike, a buggy, a rally car, a racing truck, a mudplugger (jeep), a big rig and a monster truck. You can't use any of them in each race, which is a bit annoying as the only one that is any good is the rally car. Even then it's the best of a bad lot, braking makes you lose too much speed but if you don't brake you'll go round a corner, oversteer into a rock and it's another photo mode opportunity! Oh wait you missed it.
Looks wise, the best looking thing is the intro movie, which looks like a bunch of Lost cutscenes, and there's a lovely wee thing where if you get the car dirty, then drive through water, it gets cleaned. Whoopee-fucking-do. When a mobile carwash is one of the highlights of a game, it's not exactly wonderful. The online mode is brutal. Playing online twice, I never managed to finish. Bear in mind the race gets stopped 30 seconds after the winner crosses the line, you get the idea. It's run by the kind of people who got GC55's in 12 days and can finish TTFAF on Expert. Not a fun thing. Nor is it a fun game ultimately, glad I never bought this one, sorry Cogan!
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