Having this game since more or less the japanese launch of it, i'm still very impressed.
and Yes, I believe , when other cars lay deep mud trails , it affects you like in realllife when you drive over it. you have to steer a litle bit to left or right to force your straight drive. (or i was drunk as hell and fantasizing this...
)
Graphicly this game is very nice, and some levels are pretier then other other ones.
road blocks (old cards, wooden plates etc) are interactive, you can smash drive trough them and they stay like that.(havocish things
)
- game moves prety fast, and when in turbo mode (actually most of the time) it goes incredibly fast (anybody saw Spaceballs by mell brooks?
)
- very responsive vehicles. you can really tell when you drive a truc, buggy , rally car or bike
at least they dont handle all the same. every vehicle has his own pro and cons
buggys are nice allround, bikes are versatile in movement and pretty fast but drag alot on mud,
rally cars, are very fast, but turbo charge is overheating very fast
trucks are very fast in the mud and decent turbo speeds but overal not so flexible in movement and also lower topspeed
what this japanese version needs (just a small list by me) OR the final game (not talking about online now)
- more customisation : i would love to change parameters of the car and drivers
- personalise it more : you only see the name PLAYER in the highscore, nowhere you can specify your own drivers name. change driver attributes would be nice, imagine a chick with only lingery driving the bike, or driver with clown costume etc... these are small touches to make it a bit more fun
- put a speedometer onscreen: in the end, it wouldnt have a real purpose , but its already nice to have , just for un. (like, wow i took that corner at 185km/hour , much faster then last time etc...)
- more audio tracks/ different style of audio tracks. I admit, the songs are well in the style of the game, rough tough lean and mean, but i would like to rally around also with some rap music or some pop music for a change...
- minigames: think like in crazy taxi. that would make this game so much fun.
and off course, more tracks , more of everything (like every game
)
These are some things i believe could make the japanese version without online better.
The game is really just the core game, nice tracks and vehicles and races and not so much more . These things dont make or brake a game, but are some small simple things that would make your enjoyment better .
my verdict 8/10
add all above in the final game with decent online, i would give it a big fat 9