A game that will REALLY test your reaction time but repetition and seemingly impossible challenges later on define it
A game based around break neck speeds and trying to avoid crashing while putting yourself in dangerous situations in order to keep that same speed up to it's maximum
Graphics:
I've seen the PSP do better graphics than this in other games, but it gets the job done. The cars look pretty good and the world you drive in, what little of it you see since your going so fast, looks good. Graphics are probably low so the game can maintain a high fps even when going so fast.
Music:
Great to horrible. Your going to be excited one moment to race with some pretty rocking music in the background, then the next want to rip your ears off every time you have to listen to "I don't like your girl friend" in a plethora of different languages for really no reason. Just be thankful there's an option to pick and choose what songs play and what don't in the options screen.
Controls:
Tight and responsive. Your going to need it for the later levels where it's going to take memorization and pure effort to make it out with a good score.
Story:
None, this is a pure racing game where the only reason you need to continue playing is to earn that next gold medal and unlock the next car.
Gameplay:
As a racing game, this game is a solid title. With everything else, it becomes questionable. The basic idea is to race a group of AI opponents in reverse/forward tracks in a number of different modes with 7 different car classes: Classic, Factory, Tuned, Hot Rod, Super, Race Specials and Dominator. The modes range from normal Racing, Road Rage where you have to force as many opponent cars to crash as possible, Eliminator where you have to place above a certain elimination placement each time the timer counts to zero, Burning Lap a time trial mode, Maniac where you score points for driving as dangerously as possible, Drift Challenge where you score points for doing as many and as long as possible drifts around the course, Near Miss Challenge with points awarded for dodging close to cars in traffic, and Burnout Challenge in which the point is to maintain your Burnout Boost as long as possible. While this is a pretty varied number of events to do in the game, when they are repeated so many times in the same order for all 7 different classes, it can be very annoying and you'll be wondering just how long do you have to play before this game is over. The VERY last race of the game (as well as others before it) really tests your drifting and burnout boost maintaining ability and seemed impossible, but I managed to do it.
A Burnout Boost is obtained from driving on the wrong side of the road and dodging oncoming cars. When your meter on the lower left side is full, it turns blue and you can now boost to max speed. You have to keep driving dangerously to build up the boost before it reaches all the way down again in order to maintain the boost which at times is much easier said than done. At times in the game trying to maintain a burnout will drive you crazy and force you to analyze where and how to get what you need to fill that meter. Multiplayer is handled ad hoc with other people who have the game and since this isn't one of the series' popular titles, that will probably be hard to do. The game does come with a special online feature that can be used to download new tracks to the game for play during races and other online features, but the serves for the game have long since been disabled so that feature becomes useless.
The game has an awards system which unlocks achievements, new cars, alternative paths in the tracks, and other options. The problem is that some of these awards will make you wonder if they're really worth it. The cars you unlock would be great if you actually had people to play with and show them off to and the alternative paths weren't unlocked through a wholly asinine method. In the middle of your break neck speed racing where opponent cars are generally rarely in one given spot, you need to force them to crash into designated small barriers to unlock the path. This makes unlocking new paths a very rare occurrence and one that when it actually happens it's never intentional as actually trying to make it happen is a complete pain in the ass. One major issue a player will have with the game is how hard it is to avoid crashing into the cars at times when driving down the wrong side of the road, especially since you can barely see the cars even though they all have their head lights on. You will need pure and utter concentration to make it through the games trickier moments. Expect to crash OFTEN until you get this down.
Score: 6.0
I completed this game with all gold medals and all cars unlocked. But you aren't awarded 100% till you unlock all the alternate paths in each of the courses in the game. Forget that!