Publisher: Acclaim Entertainment Developer: Acclaim Entertainment Platform: PS2
Category: Racing Rating: E for Mild Violence

Story:

This being a racing game, it really doesn\'t have a story. Basically, through the whole game, you race and crash into stuff.

Graphics:

The graphics are amazing in this game. The light shines perfectly off the cars. When you go off road, you can see the dust trailing behind you. The backgrounds are gorgeous. Also, when you crash, it goes into slow motion. The slow-mo effects look brilliant! The glass even breaks when two cars slam together. Also the effects for when you go into turbo look stunning! But, unfortunately, cars don\'t go into flames when you get a really big crash, and you can\'t see heads or bodies inside the cars.

Sound:

The soundtrack on this game consists of funky arcade techno music, and classical chase music. It suits the mood perfectly. The sounds during the crashes are excellent, from the screeching of cars to the slam noise of metal clashing together. When you go off road you can hear the dirt against the tires and side of the car. The horns all sound kind of generic, and basically all sound the same.

Game Play:

The game play is really exciting! Going at high speeds and trying to avoid cars is a ton of fun, especially when you\'re on the wrong side of the road (more on that in a sec) trying to avoid the oncoming cars. Since this being an arcade game, you have a 60 second timer. The timer decreases as the race goes on. To make the timer go back to 60, you need to reach a check point. This can be really annoying, especially if you get into a crash, because the timer continues. When you drive on the wrong side of the road, avoid hitting cars, or power sliding, you get turbo. Turbo makes you go quite fast. This is good because you can easily get ahead of people, but it\'s bad because there is a 95.8 % that you will hit something.

AI:

AI really depends on the difficulty setting. Each car has a certain difficulty. For example, the truck\'s difficulty is hard, so if you choose the truck, traffic is really heavy, and the cars you race against are really smart.

Multiplayer:

There is a head to head multiplayer game where two people race against each other. Whoever gets first place wins. This can be tough because if you hit cars, you fall behind.

Features:

The features are awesome on this game. First (and my personal favorite) is the crash replay theater. After every race, you can watch and save replays of all the crashes in that race. So, if it\'s a cool crash, just save it! Another of my favorites is the Insurance Damage. For every crash, it will tell you how much insurance money you cost the city, and people who live in it. This really doesn\'t help in any way, but it\'s still cool to see how much damage you caused. Also there is the (sorry, but I forgot the name of the game mode) mode where you race a 1 on 1 race against the computer for cars.

Camera:

The camera can be shaky during the crashes, but other than that, it\'s good.

Appropriateness:

In this game, you are racing illegally in the streets. You are driving on the wrong side of the road, crossing the double white line, and hitting people for fun. So basically you are breaking the law for fun. And there is some violence, since you are crashing in to people. I\'m guessing people get killed.

Final Ratings

Story - F Graphics -A+ Sound - B+ Game Play - A- Features - B- Multiplayer - A Appropriateness- A

Overall: 91%

This game for the most part is clean, nothing overly violent. But it is encouraging people to drive like a maniac, but I doubt it will make people drive like a psychopath.