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Speed Kings

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As I don’t like racing games that much, so I may just be the perfect reviewer for them, as I have no preconceived notions on how racing games should feel. This game sits somewhat uncomfortably for me, sitting between being an “arcade” and a “simulation” style racer, with out being one or the other, causing this reviewer to become a little frustrated with a game that has quite a lot of potential as a new “illegal street bike racing” game.

The game has a number of modes in both single player and multi-player, but it’s best to learn how to play the game by attempting to get your license. The license mode sees you attempting a number of moves and tricks in a certain time limit to get a ranking of gold, silver or bronze. I got bronze, and never tried again, so I am not sure what, if anything, you get for higher, apart from the knowledge you know how to handle your bike well.

The moves and tricks you learn are detailed in the book, but it’s good to practice them in this mode to get a real feel for the games mechanics and the motorbikes’ handling. And handling takes some getting used to, as there is a heap of buttons to learn and remember. The initial configuration of the controller is a little funny to other racing games – A is the throttle, X is the front break, B is kick/punch, Y is powerdown, and white is powerband. The left trigger is trick, while the right trigger is rear break/skid. The alternative is a little more familiar, with the left trigger as powerband, the right trigger is throttle, A is the trick, X is the rear break, B is kick/punch, Y is rear break/skid, and white is powerdown. And this is my first complaint about the game – I wish you could map your own button configuration to the controller because I like using the trigger as a throttle, so used the second configuration, but even then I was constantly looking at the controller to press the right buttons.

Now, you’re probably wondering what the hell “powerband” and “powerdown” are. They’re just fancy terms for “turbo” and “power slide’, respectively. As you race, fight, dodge cars, and perform tricks, you build up your powerband gauge, and once it’s full you can use your powerband to turbo away from the other riders. Powerdown is used when trees and poles fall in, or semi-trailers cross, your path, and you need to slide under them to miss crashing into them. Usually the word “powerdown” will flash on screen, and a flashing arrow will appear above the obstacle, and generally if you hit the button immediately, you’ll avoid the object by sliding under it. I say usually, because on a few occasions I’ve done it at EXACTLY the right time, and slid but popped up before the obstacle, and crashed into it. This could have been my bad timing, if only my friend hadn’t been playing at the time, and did the exact same thing in the same place.

In both Single and Multi player games you have the option to do a Single Race, a Meet, a Time Attack Race, a Trick Attack Race and playing Head To Head. Single Race is just that; a single race on your chosen track with computer controlled players, and a friend in multiplayer. The Meet mode is the meat of the game, where you race on three different circuits to unlock the next circuit. Finish all Meets and you unlock two options for ALL game modes, Mirrored Tracks and Traffic. Mirrored tracks option allows you to reverse the track direction, and Traffic allows you to turn off the traffic. Time Attack is just you versus the clock; no other traffic, no other riders. Trick Attack is where you have to perform various tricks within a certain time limit, and head to head is you up against one other rider, either computer controlled or against another human.

If that’s not enough to keep you busy, once you get the best times for ALL races available, thus unlocking extra bikes, you also unlock Grand prix mode. In single player you race against other riders, and it’s the only multiplayer mode where you can have four players. I must admit I never got this far, so reluctantly I can’t tell you if it’s on new tracks or not. Furthermore, on each race, there are respect challenges. Respect is earned by performing various tricks, like “8 powerbands” or “kick 4 riders” or “handstand for 150 meters”. These can be attempted in Single Race mode as well as Meet mode, and unlock even more bikes and extras.

With all these modes and unlockables, how could you possibly become bored with the game! Well, maybe it’s just me, but the controls really put me off. There’s just too many to think about. To do a trick like a handstand, you need to hold throttle, kick and trick, as well as steer. Trying to get to each checkpoint with the clock ticking down, other riders trying to knock you off the bike, on coming traffic as well as traffic that comes from the side and behind while you try to remain in first place for the finish line is already enough to worry about, let alone doing a powerdown to avoid a tree that’s fallen down, and performing tricks to keep your powerband meter up so you can turbo. It gets even worse when it’s raining or snowing, as the roads become really slippery and you lose control on every corner. Then, on top of that, there’s police, who if they catch you take a whopping 5 seconds off your time! Luckily, the AI isn’t very smart, or perhaps it’s very smart and has the same difficulty in playing the game, as the computer-controlled riders seem to crash as often as I did. This made the game a little more fair and less frustrating than it could have been.

Graphically the game is excellent. The sun glare on some roads is frighteningly blinding in some cases, while the rain and snow on other tracks looks real, with water spraying across the road as you skid out around a corner. The weather has a real physical effect on the bikes too, which is good too, although at other times the physics is a little over exaggerated. For example, sometimes you can get crazy air going over jumps. The sense of extreme speed is well represented, especially with powerband. The tracks are all very bright and colourful, reminding me of SSX with all the flashing and what have you, and the amount of bikes in terms of style, colour and rider uniform is also superb. Crashing looks cool, which is good because you’re going to be doing it a lot in this game. Sound wise it’s not too bad, standard motorbike sounds alongside standard traffic sound, but there’s no option to use your own soundtrack, so you’ll have to put up with the games’ idea of a “adrenalin pumping” techno-rock soundtrack, which get tired after a while.

Speed Kings is not a bad game; it’s a solid attempt at creating something a bit different from your run of the mill racing bike game. Maybe it packs too much in, tries to be a jack-of-all-trades in terms of whether it’s an arcade or a simulation type game, and thus doesn’t excel in either field. But it is a lot of fun, gives a good sense of the “speed” and “danger” of illegal street racing, and has a lot of different modes and unlockables that will keep you playing for a while if you can get over the frustrating controls.

Pros:

Very colourful tracks.
Lots of modes and unlockables.
Gives a good sense of the “speed” and “danger” of illegal street racing.
Great fun if/when you get the hang of controls.

Cons:

Too many functions on the controller and can’t map them to suit your style.
No custom sound track, No System Link and No Live support
Doesn’t know if it’s an arcade or simulation style racer.

Score: 75/100

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Dr Muto

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Dr Muto Xbox cover image

I don’t often play platform games. Last time I played one was Abe’s Odyssey on PC about 2 years ago. I’ve played the demo of Blinx, and Whacked, and a couple of games on PS2 a while ago, but that’s about it. So I’ve got a very limited view of what I can compare this game to. Having said that, Dr Muto is an incredibly fun and humorous game that has enough variety in it to have you wanting to keep playing.

The game starts off with a cinematic that has Dr Muto dozing on the couch, dreaming of his crazy conquests. He dreams that he blows up the Planet Midway in an attempt to solve it’s growing energy problems. He wakes with a start and finds that it wasn’t a dream after all, and that the Planet Midway is destroyed. With the help of his computer Al, the good doctor has to go and steal parts for the Genitor 9000 from the 4 worlds he hasn’t blown up, as well as collect terra and isotopes to power the Genitor.

Starting in the Doc’s lab, you are given a brief introduction to the way the game plays. You have to run around the lab, collecting isotopes before the lab blows up. After this, you have to morph into a mouse and then crawl down a whole and retrieve Al’s guidance chip. This powers the telescope that allows you to travel to the four planets to retrieve the needed isotopes, terra and Genitor parts to repair the world of Midway. This is a neat way to introduce the basics of the game, and gets you used to the controls, which are fairly straight forward, and the camera, which is exceedingly annoying.

Each of the different worlds has 3 different areas, each divided into 3 again. There are a number of things you have to collect on each world, and pressing the back button can access the “master plan” which shows you which things you’ve completed and what you need to collect. Each world has it’s own dangers, mostly in the form of robot guards, various animals that you can get DNA for morphs from, and dangerous surfaces like goo and poisoned water. Using the X button sends out a blast from your Splizz Gun that stuns robots and gains DNA from animals, and using the B button blasts the robots and animals into oblivion. The A button is used to jump, and pressing this twice gives you a higher jump, used to jump over obstacles. As you travel around the world, there are boxes to blast open, which contain isotopes or “magic red bubbly”, or health potion. Robots also drop health when you kill them.

DNA is used for Morphs, which change the good Doctor into various animals, like fish, gorilla, mouse, bird, spider, etc. Each morph has different abilities, and these are needed in different sections of the game. For example, on the second world there is a lot of water, so you need the fish morph to swim. There are a lot of places that you are too big for, so the mouse morph is used to crawl through small holes. Sometimes Al will inform you of what you need to change into, sometimes it’s obvious, and other times it’s not quite so clear, and you really need to pay attention to your surroundings. If there is a grate with a hole in it, you generally need to change into a mouse. If there is a web, you need to change into a spider. Each morph has different attacks as well, some of which are quite humorous to watch.

Another part of the game involves catching a certain type of creature, called a Gomer, with your stun ray and flinging it across a room into crates and generators. These in turn open locks, secret areas or contain special items. They’re also effective against enemy robots. If you miss with your aim, or accidentally kill a Gomer, it will respawn, so there are no missing out on things because you’re a bad shot, or, more often, you can’t get the camera to do what it needs to do so you stuff up your shot.

The good thing about this game is that you can repeat a section of the levels if you think you’ve missed something. Generally the “master plan” is organised in order of what to find where, but as the game is kind of open ended, you can totally miss what you need. You can go back to previous areas once you are home, but sometimes it’s hard to remember where exactly in the world you need to go to obtain the missing Terra or Genitor piece. Going home is simply a matter of finding “transloaders”, located near the start of each area, that teleport you home and allow you to save your game. Also, when you die you go back to a certain part of the game, and not necessarily the start, so you don’t get too frustrated doing the whole level over and over again.

Graphic wise the game is fairly good. It’s a cartoon type game, so there’s nothing fantastic about it, but there’s nothing bad about it either. I can’t say if it looks like the PS2 version or not, although I would have to say it does look better than average. Sometimes the game can glitch, like a robot can get caught on the terrain and be hard to shoot or kill, but this has only happened twice for me. The sound is adequate too, but sometimes an annoying glitch occurs when you go into the transloaders and save your game where it continually plays the Splizz Gun’s capture sound until you save. The most annoying thing about the game, however, is the camera. It changes to the most annoying angles at the worst possible times. Sometimes it will move into a position where you miss out on seeing enemies, or miss gaps you must jump, and you’ll find yourself cursing at the screen on more than a few occasions.

The best part of this game is the humour. It’s aimed at a teen audience, but it is genuinely funny, with lots of puns and clever interaction with the different characters. For example, Al is obviously based on Hal from the movie “2001, A Space Odyssey”, and constantly gives you glib replies and attitude. The animations of the different morphs are sometimes hilarious, especially the mouse as he chomps the enemies and spits them out. The cute factor is also apparent, as the mouse hops around, and whenever the Doctor finds a piece of terra or Genitor he does a little dance. It’s a game that kids can play, although it’s aimed at an older audience that gets jokes about “white sticky stuff” and the like.

All in all Dr Muto is a very fun game. It’s challenging, especially the end of level bosses, and finding all the pieces you need to collect can be frustrating, but it’s not impossible. The most bothersome thing in the game is the camera, and although the black button resets the camera to “look forward”, the amount of times you end up using it makes you wonder why they didn’t lock the camera in that position in the first place. It detracts enough from the game to make me give the game a lower score, although it’s not nearly as bad as other games.

Pros:

Fun and genuinely humorous.
Big levels with lots to do that will keep you playing for a while.
Lots of variety in gameplay to keep you interested.

Cons:

That *^&!!#@! camera.
Some graphic and sound glitches that are really annoying.

Score 75 /100

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Black Stone Magic & Steel

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Black Stone Magic & Steel Xbox Game Cover

Are you old enough to remember Gauntlet? I remember going down to Timezone, pilling coin after coin into the slot and simply playing for hours. Even if you were playing by yourself, you could safely bet that someone would join you eventually. You’d laugh, you’d cry, and most importantly, you’d have fun playing an excellent example of what co-operative multiplayer is all about. Black Stone by Xicat tries to capture this sense of fun and co-operation, and succeeds in doing so to a point. That point is that it is now 2003, no longer the mid 1980s, and we’ve been spoilt with intelligent storylines, robust gameplay, superb graphics and excellent audio in other games that Gauntlet simply can’t hope to live up to, and, unfortunately, neither does Black Stone.

The intro of this game is AMAZING, and after watching I just thought, “wow, this game is going to be good!” I guess that’s what intros are for. This wonderful piece of CGI looks like something out of Final Fantasy, as beautifully rendered hoards of orcs run towards their death at the hand of a fighter, a wizard, and thief as a hard electric rock theme plays over the top of it. Now, if the game looked like this, it would be one of the best hack and slash games available today. Unfortunately this is horribly spoilt by the start screen, which looks like something from an Amiga game, and it doesn’t get much better after that.

The story, told through static yet colourful storyboards, is that a thousand years after their defeat at Zedan, the dark mages hiding within the Tower of Babylon have grown very powerful. They start stealing the inhabitants of Zedan’s souls through weakening the Holy Light. They did this by waking the ancient volcano, Moon-eye. The leader of the dark mages Xylon has collected pieces of the Black Stone, and threatens the lands’ very existence. You and your friends have to save it. Or something like that.

Jumping straight into the game, you choose your character from 5 different classes – Warlock, Fighter, Thief, Archer and Pirate. Each class has different strengths and weaknesses, and its up to you to chose how you want to play. The Warlock and Archer are missile weapon fighters, whilst Thief, Fighter and Pirate are melee specialists. You can chose from two different characters out of each class, and there are 2 unlockables for each class, but there is no difference between the characters within a class in terms of strengths and so forth. However, each character does have different special moves, which are all of relatively the same power, but each look different.

The first level adjusts you to the gameplay. You move using the left joystick, and melee attack with the A button, missile attack with the X button, use magic scrolls with the B button. The left trigger is an avoid/dodge move, while the right trigger charges up your magic, which decreases every time you shoot a missile weapon. Holding the right trigger and pushing melee attack does one special move, and pressing the melee attack button whilst running (holding the joystick down) does another special move. The object of this level, and all subsequent levels, is to progress through, killing all the monsters and their generators; smashing open all the crates; and unlocking all the chests. Magic Scrolls, gold and food (health) are hidden in the chests, as well as temporary power ups, such as Multi Shot and Invincibility, but beware, there are also curses such as the Pig Curse, which disables your fighting ability, and poisoned foods. There are also animals you can ride on, much like in the old favourite “Golden Axe”, and these pack one hell of a punch, but disappear after too short a while.

At the end of every 3 or so levels is a Bad Boss. This is a creature that is a little harder to kill than your run-off-the-mill goblin, as it has more powerful and ranged attacks that it shoots off at you rapidly. After that, you have a Big Bad Boss, who generally takes up half the screen, shoots all manner of mayhem at you, as well as sends monsters for you to be attacked by, and can only bit hit when it’s in a certain position. There are certain items collected during previous levels which reduce these creatures hit points but it’s still a tough fight.

In between each level, a summary of all that you’ve killed and found is displayed, and either gain a credit, used to continue if you die, or unlock a character. Here you will also get to spend your gold on Magic Scrolls, keys, greater sword attacks, more overall hit points, and Elementals, which float around you shooting off bolts of elemental stuff in which ever way you are moving. You can also save or load a game here. In an unfortunate oversight, it is ONLY here that you can have another player join you – no joining in mid game, which means when your friend comes over you’ll have to either restart the level losing all progress, or wait until you’ve completed the level.

The gameplay is pretty fast and relentless, and that’s cool if you like that, but with 26 levels all practically the same it becomes rather old, quickly. Building up your character is fun, but at even at lower levels they all play pretty much the same. The camera can become annoying as it is stuck in a certain position, and you have no control over it. It obscures things at best, and hinders you at worst. The game seems to have some weird auto aim that causes you to shoot in an entirely different direction to what you want to, and has difficulty firing and attacking on the diagonals. I did think it was just me until two of my friends said the same thing. Multiplayer is fun, but again the camera angles can get in the way, and as you are all on the screen at the same time, you can only move when you are all heading in the same direction. This bites when you unlock a chest and it pops out with needed food, but you just can’t reach it because the others are fighting monsters on the other side. It is also a pain when your allies steal you food / gold/ power-up. Then again, it was the same in Gauntlet, so you really need to use teamwork in order to get the most out of it.

The graphics are lacklustre at best, and simply don’t push the Xbox at all, which after the opening credits is a tremendous let down. The sound is simply atrocious. The music isn’t too bad, but there’s no option to put your own in, which again ignores the power of the Xbox. But the sound effects, my gosh, they are just simply BAD. It was like they were recorded for the commodore 64 and given echo effects, with some of the sounds being as annoying as fingernails on a blackboard. Moreover, they don’t suit the action. You fire off a Warlock’s magic sphere, and it sounds more like a pinball hitting a bumper than a ball of powerful destructive magic. It was a real shock to me that the sound was so bad, and I’m so glad I haven’t invested in 5.1 surround speakers yet!

Overall Black Stone isn’t a bad game, it’s just simply not a good one. It’s a rip off of an old game, with a couple of elements from other old games, but doesn’t improve on them, nor does it use the power of the Xbox in any way, shape or form. Multiplayer is fun and adds to the games value and playability, but it’s just too repetitive to keep your interest longer than a week, especially with the other, more quality, hack and slash games about.

Positives:

Its gauntlet for the new millennium!

AWESOME introduction.

Multi-player havoc abounds.

Negatives

It doesn’t move very far away from the original gauntlet gameplay, which is nearly 20 years old, and it shows.

It’s very repetitive, even for a hack and slash.

Graphics are PS2 standard or worse.

Sounds are simply atrocious.

6.5/10