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| Namco |
Point of View |
Racing |
1-2 |
T |
Smashing Drive
Reviewed by: Joel
Namco has finally released there first game for the XBOX, and the only positive thing I can find for Namco is that you can only go up from this one because Smashing Drive is just not a good game.
Gameplay: Smashing Drive is just a bad immitation of Crazy Taxi. In Smashing Drive you are a cab driver in which you never see who drives around passengers who you also never see. Through the courses there are little power ups throughtout the courses that help you in different ways, they are: Cutter, Sonic, Blast, Glider, Turbo, 4X4. Some of these powerups really don't do much. The glider is probably the most pathetic power up of them all. It doesn't alow you to fly the only time it works is when you go off a jump.
Smashing Drive includes two gamemodes. They are Arcade Mode in which you will try to make your way around New York trying to take your customers to there destonations and beating the other cab to various locations throughout New York. The other mode is Head to Head mode where you and a friend can battle it out in New York to all the various locations. Sounds like fun right? Well no not really, the car physics are not all there. I think that when a car is speeding up it shouldn't be able to make amazingly difficult turns without having some sort of difficulty.
Graphics: Talk about simple graphics. Everything in Smashing Drive is simple. The taxi cabs don't look like anything to brag about there are just nice and simple. The area's throughout the game really don't do much for me either. The animation follows the same pattern as the rest of the graphics, when the car transforms into a 4X4 for a Glider it's not a smooth looking transformation.
Controls: The controls are a little to easy. You will only be using two buttons throughout the game and those are the trigger buttons to accelerate and brake, and then left joystick.
Replay: Smashing Drive holds no replay value what so ever. You can beat smashing drive in less then ten minutes. The multiplayer mode could keep you going for maybe another ten minutes, but not much more.
Sound: The sound effects throughout Smashing Drive are rather bare. You rarley ever hear them and when you do they don't do much to help the game out. If things weren't going for Smashing Drive already, now there soundtrack just seals the deal for a bad game. I ended up muting the game after a while, because I really just thought the soundtrack shouldn't have been there.
Overall Presentation:
Scores:
Gameplay:  4
Graphics: 3
Controls:  4
Replay:  1
Sound:  2
Total Score: 3
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