| This
should be the perfect racing game. Namco, who have obviously
run out of dynamic words beginning with R, have been making successively
more refined versions of Ridge Racer for years now. The series
has been massively successful, and rightly so – the various
iterations of Ridge and Rage Racer have been among the very best
arcade racing games ever produced and, for years, has been the
only sane choice in the living room for those of us who couldn’t
give a shit about torque ratios, load balancing and rear shocks.
Piss off. I don’t care.
And first impressions of R:Racing are great.
There are more tracks and more cars and more racing modes than
you can shake a bloody great stick at. Wade into the arcade mode,
select the default track and and it’s great – it really
is. The old magic is still there, weaving through the pack in
a car that appears to be twice as fast as everything else on the
track is still one of the most satisfying ways to (ab)use technology
that we have.
Yeeeee hah!
Flushed with success from the opening race,
you return to the stage select screen and choose another one at
random… Only to discover that you’re racing, alone,
through some generic mediterranian countryside in a poor mans
version of Sega Rally. Ugh. You quit, in disgust and select another
track…
What. The. Fuck.
If only that were real fire…
Drag racing? Okay, I can sort of see the attraction
of the real thing in a vague petrol-head fascination with all
things mechanical kind of way, but what is it doing here? Where
the only thing you’re measuring is my ability to press a
button and to not touch the analogue stick?
Damn you Namco. You’ve taken one of the
purest and most exhilerating racing games around and you’ve
turned it into a third rate Gran Turismo. You’ve tried to
be every racing game I’ll ever need and all you’ve
given me is two thirds of a racing game that I don’t want
and can’t bring myself to care about.
Conversations that never happened: “Yes Michael, I’m
sure you’re very good – but
we’d like you to
compete in a rally trial before we allow you in the next race.”
The story mode is far and away the worst culprit
here, seeing you competing in quick sucession of rally trials,
road races and drag strips before finally allowing you back on
the track. For all the between race video showing a supposed “racing
life”, the different races don’t feel connected. At
all. Every time you start to feel that you’re getting some
enjoyment out of the game, it’s snatched away from you and
replaced with something terrible.
This really should be the perfect racing game.
AHCHAY, April
2004.
RODENT CASH RATING -
Would be okay for £10, but it’s a rip-off at £30
"Pushing a trolley round Budgens is more fun."
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