Review by Jon Falcone
UK Certification 12+ | UK RRP £49.99 | Region PAL | Developer Eden Games | Publisher Atari
To get straight to the point, this is neither great nor terrible but sniffs of both. It’s a game that has numerous elements and they don’t all work well together. Most of the time they frustrate.
Noticeable things upon playing this are:
The graphics aren’t particularly brilliant, some of the scenery is nice, the narrative segways and characters are ugly and the steering is inaccessible at first. As the main character your are a valet driver caught up in the world of racing’s ‘beautiful people’, for example some tasks aren’t accessible unless you have a hairdresser or new clothes. Considering the emphasis is on accumulating money, property, cars and prestige, this game looks outdated.
As you develop through the game the number of side and sub challenges, arranged through your seemingly endless foray of mobile phone calls, gets annoying. Just as you think you’re on your way to get your next license you are asked to go off-roading as a task for someone or challenged to a street race on the spot. Whilst many will like this element, the precursor of an endlessly buzzing phone made this an irritant.
As you develop an appreciation of the driving, the game becomes far more enjoyable. The training schools are a huge pain as they send you off on courses with no pre-training on how best to handle a bend, it’s a do and learn affair as you repeat courses again and again until you know of your own intuition that taking your foot off the accelerator works far better than the brakes, except on off-road courses, where the reverse is true. This may seem logical stuff on paper, but as you’re playing the game the best tactics are certainly not the most instinctive.
This is a nice big game and as long as you have time to really get into it, don’t mind weird looking characters from yesteryear and aren’t frustrated by the contradiction that is a casual tournament, there is fun to be had. For those seeking more immediate gameplay and a nicer aesthetic, this is pure, pointless frustration.