XGRA review

The trackside scenery can be blown up now... if you are fast enough to aim, that is.

Ah, I remember Extreme-G. I remember back in the day when everyone wanted some Wipeout pie, but Sony was hiding all the plates and forks so they could have it all to themselves. Extreme-G was an eagerly anticipated game by myself and many other N64 owners. I remember reading an interview with the developers a month before it came out and getting all excited for what was being billed as a Wipeout beater.

And so release day finally came and... well, let’s just say that it wasn't quite the Wipeout beater we were all expecting.

Things are different today. Wipeout is dead and buried thanks to the disappointment that Wipeout Fusion turned out to be and so the latest Extreme-G game has a chance to shine on its own.

Good Start

Get ready for XGRA!

Things are looking good from the start, with the box cover looking rather funky. Power up your PS2 and you get a very nice intro playing before your eyes. Proceed to the title screen and it is all very stylish looking. Going to the options screen I discovered that there are two soundtracks for the game - a rock one and a dance one - and you can choose which one will be playing as you race or even a mixture of the two.

"This is going to be great!", thought I.

As with most racers the main part of the game is the season mode. Here you choose a racer and a bike and take part in the numerous race leagues that get set out before you. Interestingly, each race assigns you a 'contract' that will reward you at the end with an upgrade to your bike. The contract may require you to destroy a certain racer, hit a certain speed or destroy some billboards. The reward will be something like extra weapons or a better shield. Nice as this may be, it is utterly pointless. The changes made to your bike seem to be very ineffectual and you may as well be shopping for dog food in the supermarket (eh? – ed.) for all the difference they make.

Handles Like a Pig

XGRA stands for Xtreme G Racing Association, in case you're interested.

Don't let that put you off, though. The handling is the main thing in these games and as luck would have it the handling in XGRA isn't bad. It isn't even dreadful. No, the handling in XGRA is just totally and utterly pointless.

Let me try to explain this a bit further. You can move your bike left and right as you would expect, but this really doesn't seem to have much influence on how you race. It seems that the developers have pre-determined whether you will be able to take a corner without hitting the sides or not, as you will invariably hit the outside edge of most corners no matter what speed you take them at.

There is almost no subtlety or depth to the handling of the bikes and even switching to the d-pad seems to make very little difference. The game moves along at a cracking pace, so why the tracks have been made in the way they have is mind-boggling. Many of the tracks are very outlandish with some excellent ideas - roaring along with volcanoes erupting beside you or Star Wars style tower guns firing at you is great. However, much of your race time will be spent bouncing from one side of the track to another.

Pretty as a picture

What's a bike without weapons these days?

Some of tracks have weather effects at various points and your view will often be totally obscured. So expect some more side-to-side wall pinging then as well.

The graphics for XGRA are actually very good. Some of the track designs are very imaginative with huge structures towering above you and there is a vast amount of trackside detail that moves around as well. I encountered about five occasions of slowdown when the screen was very busy, but other than that the game has a consistent frame rate - although it isn't really high enough. The last couple of futuristic racers (think Quantum Redshift on the Xbox and F-Zero GX on the GameCube) have had solid frame rates of 60fps, which is a must for games that are as fast as they are. XGRA can be just as fast, but doesn't have such a high frame rate, which is disappointing and just adds to the lack of control you have over the vehicles.

Wiped Out

Like a drunk supermodel, XGRA is pretty but not very good at corners.

The option to choose between a rock and a dance soundtrack is a nice one and it certainly hasn't been skimped on. Being a fan of the music that gets played by someone going 'plinkety-plunk' on an electric keyboard I opted for the dance tracks and was pleasantly surprised. There are some remixes of my favourite tunes in there and the rest of the music tracks aren't too bad either. The sound effects are OK, though perhaps nothing amazing.

Time to analyse. Going on what I have said so far about a lack of control, pointless weapons and constantly hitting the sides of the track it sounds as if the game is stupidly hard. In actual fact, the game is stupidly easy. Every time you enter a race, you are almost certain to get a top three finish with first place a very high possibility - even if you haven't ever done that track before. Literally all you need to do is hold down the accelerator button to succeed in this game. In fact, I totally believe that you could glue the accelerator button down and bugger off to read the newspaper in the toilet and still come first in a race. Despite often not knowing what was going on or where to go, the game always made sure that I was facing in the correct direction so it was impossible to make a mistake.

The Easy Life

If you don't like to drive faster than 30MPH, then XGRA is definately the wrong game for you.

I have a very strong feeling that the developers knew all about the problems that XGRA has, but decided to make the game as easy as they could, instead of fixing these issues. It is almost impossible to be 'good' at this game and I don't believe that you can be 'bad' either. You could race on a track a hundred times, but never really learn it or remember it. There is no learning curve to the game at all - it is totally flat and doesn't change. This is perhaps one of the most pointless games that I have ever actually played and I got totally bored of it.

Imagine if Doom had been released with all the cheats on. And I mean all of them - god mode, all the weapons and keys, infinite ammo and the walking through walls one. There would be no challenge to the game, no skill to be developed and it would just be a totally pointless experience. XGRA is just like that and playing a two-player game of Street Fighter II on your own would be more thrilling.