Navigation
Introduction/Plot:
There are way too many gacing games, this time they try to be some more original using 4x4 instead of fast car, of course there is no plot. Introduction Menu are pretty well done and way too wide, showing we're in front of a simulator way more than on an arcade game.
Gameplay/Controls
The defaults made this game almost unplayable. I had to change car settings, controller settings and sound settings so i could just stand to play it. the graphics had me pretty excited, but when i started playing the first thin I noticed was how much slower i am than the other cars. the ability to switch between 2wd and 4wd hi & low was pretty cool, but complicated things when I already had to switch gears. I know this is an attempt to make it realistic, but why not focus on other areas, such as driving while completely immersed under water. After I got the hang of the controls on one car, I tried some other cars, and didn't notice much difference. Actually, I didn't notice ANY difference. Multiplayer was a bit more fun, since I was racing against someone that had also never played before. I still lost though :^( You can tweak the handling of your vehicle with a slider, but i found that any change just made it even harder to handle, so i brought it back to the defaults. The side that supposedly should enhance the singleplayer mode is the 'career' mode. Racing and racing trying to get some money. More money will mean you can grab addons and more powerfull cars, everything has been seen on GT years ago and way better. Further more here it's even bad balanced, it's pretty hard to develop a good car and easily you will run out of money.
Sound quality was lame. the sounds were fine, but all sounded like they were recorded in the 1970's! pretty sad, because so far this game was looking pretty good. The music suffers from the same sound quality issues as the sfx and instrumental second rate rock is not my cup of tea.
Graphics
All i can say is Incredible. this may be because I just got a geforce 2 card this week :^) but the cars look great, the tracks are beautiful, and the sky and lighting effects are out of this world. You can watch the replays and it actually looks like you are watching a race on TV.
Overall
After seeing the screenshots, actually playing the game was a real let down. I would not waste the time to even download the demo, and definitely not waste the time or fuel to drive to the local EB to pick up this "should be in the bargain barrel but isn't" title.
