Reviews

This lighthearted and downright silly take on loot-collecting, hack and slash adventuring features great art, full voice acting and over 100 missions to complete. DeathSpank has its heart in the right place, but this brainchild of Ron Gilbert falls flat in a number of ways and becomes a tedious grind about halfway through.

The basic premise is that our hero, DeathSpank, is trying to obtain a powerful item known as The Artifact that was hidden behind a magic seal by a local witch. DeathSpank must battle his way across the kingdom while completing a variety of tasks assigned to him by a large cast of colourful characters.

The kingdom is quite large and is made up of dozens of distinct areas, most with their own enemy types. Many missions will require our hero to cover great distances. Thankfully, a fast travel system exists by way of magical outhouses. These outhouses also act as respawn points when DeathSpank is felled in battle.

Most missions involve collecting an item, dispatching a certain enemy, or both. While this formula is common to most games in the genre, I found a lack of mission variety to be one of DeathSpank’s biggest downfalls and was pretty much forcing myself through the last 30-40% of this 15-20 hour adventure while experiencing a diminishing return of actual fun.

A necessary evil in this case, as completing all 100+ missions and defeating the final boss essentially requires you to be at the level cap of 20 and have some of the best armour available.

My other issue is that, for a game based on collecting loot, DeathSpank does little to make collecting the loot fun, interesting or rewarding. The game simply hands out more powerful weapons and armour as you progress. You cannot actually upgrade or augment items, so there is very little attachment to them on the player’s part.

Giving players the ability to customize their weapons and armour would have gone a long way to add some depth and reduce tedium. The only reason I ever switched weapons, other than for simple strength upgrades, was thanks to an affinity system. Most enemy types are susceptible to certain weapon types like ice, fire and lightning while being resistant to others.

The entire inventory and menu system is rather convoluted, which again is a detriment to this type of game. DeathSpank has a rather limited inventory and can rid himself of excess clutter by using a grinder, which also gives him some gold back in return. Navigating the map, menu, inventory and quest log is needlessly cumbersome and only serves to detach you from the game world.

The game world itself is rather beautiful in its own right. DeathSpank is set in a colourful and cartoony land based on conventional medieval fantasy aesthetics. The distinct areas and wide variety of enemy types do a lot to give the world personality and an attractive art style is punctuated with some good cel shading.

Character and enemy art are also very good and my only real complaint about the graphics is that the screen can become cluttered with loot and money when facing a large group of enemies at which point the game will suffer from some noticeable slowdown.

Sound design is one area where DeathSpank excels, particularly for a downloadable game. Every single one of the hundreds (maybe thousands) of lines of dialogue that I encountered was competently voice acted, which is impressive considering most conversations with non-player characters have several branches to explore.

The soundtrack is also well done, featuring upbeat jazzy themes that change dynamically depending on your situation. Custom soundtracks are not an option on the PlayStation Network version, but as a trade-off it does offer a DTS audio track in addition to Dolby 5.1.

Ron Gilbert is probably best known for his work on Maniac Mansion and The Secret of Monkey Island, and his adventure game roots show in DeathSpank. In addition to a rather deep conversation system, many items that you collect can be combined to create new tools to interact with the game world or solve light environmental puzzles.

Gilbert’s games are also known for their distinct sense of humour and that is also very much intact in DeathSpank. There is an extremely silly, almost childlike quality to the writing that people will either love or hate.

Control is a little on the complicated side and makes use of every button on the PS3 controller, but is somewhat customizable. Attacks are generally best mapped to your face buttons, with items on the d-pad. These eight slots can be customized in the inventory screen  Target-locking and shield-blocking are handled by the L2 and R2 buttons, while the R1 and L1 buttons bring up the map and inventory.

Technically, DeathSpank has local two-player co-op play, however the second player is relegated to using a wizard that can’t equip items of his own. It would have been great to see each player get a customizable player and given some incentive to playing through the campaign with a partner.

There is also no new game plus option, so players must tie up any loose ends and find any items they want before taking on the final boss, though you can max out the level cap before seeing the ending. Thankfully, the game clearly warns you about this “point of no return”.

DeathSpank is a good game. In fact, I thought it was a great game for the first half of the time I played it. It’s probably worth the $15 asking price for most hack and slash adventure fans, but a distinct lack of depth may turn off hardcore players and the tedium of grinding for experience points and incrementally better loot in the second half of the game may turn away those with a passing interest in the genre.

Positives:

+ Attractive Art and Cel Shaded Graphics
+ Full Voice Acting
+ Plenty of Content

Negatives:

– Lacks Weapon and Armour Customization
– Grinding Becomes Tedious

As addictive as ever, the latest title in the Puzzle Quest series improves on the original version while returning to its traditional gameplay formula after deviating from it in Puzzle Quest: Galactrix. The story in Puzzle Quest 2 revolves around fighting the evil spread around the world by necromancers, sending your hero on quests through a series of underworld dungeons.

In this semi-open world, players will have the choice between one of four character types; assassin, barbarian, sorcerer and templar, each with their own skill sets. Venturing through the world your character will soon encounter a wide variety of eerie enemies including goblins, orcs, skeletons, ghosts, witches, and wolves.

By swapping pieces on the puzzle board, players create matches of three items or more; collecting the corresponding coloured mana, action points or inflicting skull damage. In this turn-based game the enemy will have the chance to fight back using magical, physical or skull attacks. A variety of puzzles is used in every aspect of the game, from bashing locked doors and unlocking treasure chests to searching rooms for traps and disabling them.

Massive quantities of loot are collected throughout the game, including a variety of weapons, shields and armour, potions, magic jewellery and resources used to upgrade these items. Earning experience points after each puzzle, players will occasionally get to chose one of their character’s attributes to upgrade.

The presentation of Puzzle Quest 2 kicks it up a notch compared to the original with a more serious and dark look. Both the enemies and player characters are creatively drawn with beautiful detail. The music is also very suiting, with dark and mysterious tonalities. A few cutscenes feature excellent voice acting adding a touch of variety to the game’s presentation, though it would have been nice to see more of these.

The main drawback of Puzzle Quest 2 is the world map, which is a bit tedious to navigate. To get from one point to another, characters must pass through predetermined checkpoints, rather than moving around freely. This is not a problem in itself, except when you try to backtrack to a specific point and have to pass from checkpoint to checkpoint, scrolling from one screen to the next. The cursor will automatically point in the direction of the next quest, which can cause some needless backtracking if players are not attentive. However, portals will appear along the way to fast travel you to key areas.

While the game will surely keep fans playing for hours, the experience does get a bit redundant and can be tiring if you are trying to advance the story. The encounter rate is pretty high and since every action is puzzle based, so players might get tired of the grind before reaching the end of the game.

Along with the single player quest mode, the game offers local and Xbox LIVE multiplayer, a quick battle mode which has you fighting random enemies, and a mini games mode in which you can replay any type of puzzle. Players can have more than one active character, but each must play through the story mode independently. After about 25 hours of play time, I estimate being approximately one third through the game, with my character at level 30.

Puzzle Quest 2 is truly the sequel fans have been waiting for, successfully expanding on the original concept. Despite being a bit of a grind, the game offers great value with hundreds of hours of gameplay. Players, including myself, will keep coming back for more.

Positives:

+ Many Hours of Addictive Gameplay
+ Great Audiovisual Presentation
+ Larger Variety of Puzzles

Negatives:

– Gets to Be Redundant as You Progress
– Getting Around the Map is Tedious

Burnin’ Rubber, also known as Bump ‘n’ Jump, is a top-down racing combat game that can still provide excitement almost 30 years after its initial release. The PlayStation minis version of Burnin’ Rubber is a straight port of the 1982 arcade original however, with no modern emulation features and it could be considered overpriced at $3.99 for all but die hard fans.

The action in Burnin’ Rubber takes place on 32 courses categorized by the four seasons. The goal is to reach the end of the course while smashing as many opponent vehicles as possible by sending them into walls or landing on them with a jump.

Along the way you will find obstacles like narrow bridges and rivers that must be avoided, usually by jumping. In order to make your car jump you must be travelling at 100 MPH or higher. Every time you land a jump your speed decreases by about 20 MPH.

A distinct audio and visual cue warns you of impending danger, giving you a few seconds to try and build enough speed to make dangerous leaps. Burnin’ Rubber could be considered a difficult game and at times it can be frustrating because of “cheap” opponents.

There are a number of opponent vehicle types including heavy, tank-like ones and those that drop boulder-like objects in your path. Each opponent has a different weight to it, meaning some are easier to smash into walls than others.

The physics are quite bouncy, but they are consistent, making it easier to get a feel for how opponent vehicles will react when you hit them and more importantly, how your car will behave.

Unfortunately, Burnin’ Rubber offers little in the way of modern emulation options or improvements. The lack of an auto save feature means your high scores can be lost easily. There are some simple difficulty and starting lives options to toggle.

There are no graphical filter options, however Burnin’ Rubber does look crisp on both the PSP and on a TV and features a bright colour palette. There is also a cabinet view that can be toggled on and off to your liking. Disappointingly, I found that the game would often drop frames or slow down when action got hectic.

The sound is typical of an arcade game from this era, meaning audio is minimal. An upbeat theme plays faintly in the background and thankfully the car sounds are not grating.

Control is quite simple. Your analog control or d-pad steers while a solitary button is used to trigger the jump mechanic.

While I was a huge fan of Burnin’ Rubber in arcades and spent hundreds of quarters on it at my local Laundromat, I found the $3.99 price tag a bit hard to swallow given the lack of modernization this port received, though I still consider it a great game and one of the best racers of the era. Unlike most PlayStation minis titles, you can also enjoy Burnin’ Rubber with a friend thanks to the inclusion of hotseat multiplayer.

Positives:

+ Fast and Intense Racing
+ Crisp Graphics with Cabinet View
+ Audiovisual Cues Warn of Danger

Negatives:

– No Auto Save or Graphics Filters
– Noticable Slowdown

The latest game in the Touch Generations series successfully translates the addictive, number-based logic of Picross to a 3D environment. Picross 3D offers incredible value and contains over 350 puzzles, with even more available via friends and the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection.

The game is most easily described as sculpture-by-numbers. Starting with a large, rectangular block players will break down cubes to reveal a colourful, chibi-esque sculpture. Numbers represent the total amount of cubes that should appear in a given row or column and, a bit like in Sudoku, you will use your logic to find which cubes belong in the puzzle or not. Symbols also indicate whether the cubes appear in a continuous series, in sets of two or more.

Each puzzle is timed to be completed within 5 to 30 minutes, depending on its difficulty. Most will allow up to five mistakes, except for “one-chance challenge” puzzles which allow none. Players will receive three stars for completing a puzzle under the required time and without any mistakes. Stars add up to unlock silver and gold trophy puzzles at the end of each level. Once solved, the puzzle reveals the sculpture set in a thematic background which players can view again in the game gallery.

Picross 3D offers five difficulty modes which get progressively unlocked. In beginner mode a tutorial shows players all the ropes. However, there is no way to skip this section to immediately start solving puzzles. Those returning to the Picross series or starting the game a second time may find this feature annoying.

The game is played with the stylus and a combination of d-pad buttons to highlight or remove cubes. Using the stylus alone lets you rotate the block to view it. The game also introduces slicers–blue and pink diamonds that appear at the corners of the block. Sliding the slicers back and forth lets players view each layer of the block independently, an essential tool to successfully solving the puzzles.

Players have the ability to create their own puzzles in My Picross. Either based on a sample or built from scratch, players get to chose the background, music and puzzle colours and have the option to go back and edit any puzzle. You can share your puzzles with others via local connection, as well as download and play those made by your friends.

The Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection also lets you download and unlock Puzzle Packs, which you can access in My Picross. There are also Puzzle Challenges; competitions asking users to upload their best original puzzle relating to a given theme. After the deadline, judges will review all submissions and later release the best entries for download.

With this growing online content and over 350 included puzzles, Picross 3D offers excellent value. After playing for about 15 hours, I am only about one third through the game with lots more to unlock. While some players returning to the series may find the game easy at the beginning, most players will appreciate the challenge. Addictive, simple and fun, Picross 3D is a great portable title for puzzle fans of all ages.

Positives:

+ Lots of Content with More Available Online
+ Fun to Play for Hours
+ Puzzle Creator Mode

Negatives:

– Unskippable Tutorial

Somewhat of a misnomer, this two-game mini compilation contains the original arcade version of Final Fight as well as the completely unrelated action-adventure game Magic Sword. Final Fight: Double Impact features excellent emulation, multiple display options, remixed music and drop-in/drop-out co-op that simulates playing in a real arcade.

In Final Fight, you can play as three characters who must rescue the kidnapped Jessica from the Mad Gear Gang; a group determined to destroy Metro City. Each character in this seminal side-scrolling beat ’em up has their own unique play style.

Mike Haggar is the mayor of Metro City and Jessica’s father. He is a slow brute of a man that can power bomb gang members. Cody, Jessica’s boyfriend, is fast but takes a lot of damage. Cody’s best friend Guy has the ability to “wall jump” off the edge of the screen.

Whether alone or with a partner, you will move left to right through six distinct areas and dispatch hundreds of Mad Gear Gang members using a simple, two-button control scheme. One button jumps, while the other attacks. Pressing both will unleash a powerful “death blow” that can help when you are surrounded, but at the cost of some of your life bar.

Health can be replenished by destroying environmental objects and grabbing food pick-ups. You will also find weapons like pipes and swords, which can help when trying to deal with each area’s boss.

Final Fight is still one of the best beat ’em up games ever released some 21 years later and it holds up remarkably well. The graphics are colourful, detailed and feature huge character sprites. The music is also quite good, which should come as no surprise to fans of Capcom games from this era.

Magic Sword is a longer and somewhat deeper experience than Final Fight. This distinctive side-scrolling action-adventure game puts you in the role of a hero that must traverse an evil sorcerer’s 50 floor tower and stop him from using the Black Orb to take over the world.

As you climb the tower, you will encounter chests that contain keys. These keys unlock prison doors and free several types of recruitable ally. Each ally, such as a Ninja and a Warrior, has a unique look and attack trait and defense level. Choosing the right ally to take depending on a floor’s layout or enemy types can be very beneficial.

Like Final Fight, Magic Sword uses a simple two-button control scheme where one button jumps and the other attacks. Pressing both together will trigger a screen clearing magic attack, but at the cost of some life energy.

Getting through all 50 floors takes about an hour, but there are secret doors that allow you to skip floors and some that lead to bonus levels as well so play time can vary widely. Magic Sword still looks and sounds great and this fast-paced action adventure holds up well in 2010.

The Vault is a series of in-game challenges across both Final Fight and Magic Sword that unlock bonus content such as concept art and posters. There is even an episode of the 1990s Street Fighter cartoon that features the characters from Final Fight. Challenges task you with things like beating a game with a certain character or getting through a level in a set amount of time.

Considering the relative brevity of both games, the Vault challenges and achievement set go a long way to adding replay value to this package.

Emulation, handled here by Proper Games, provides multiple display options. The arcade monitor filter uses a phosphoric glow and scan lines to provide an authentic feel. There are also crisp, sharp and classic filters. Both games include an awesome cabinet view mode, though you can also set it to widescreen, centered or zoomed modes.

Both games have remixed/arranged soundtracks on by default, which sound fantastic thanks to a great mix of retro and modern tones. You also have the option to listen to the original soundtracks as you play, which arguably sound even better.

By default, when you create a game session you are online and can be joined at any time by anyone. You can change this setting to be invite-only, or you can choose to play offline entirely. Of course, both games support local two-player action. An  option lets you delay control input to maximize quality on poor connections.

You can also set up a custom match that allows you to start from a mid-game save file and adjust the difficulty level. You can save your progress in both games at any time and an auto save will be created if you exit.

In my experience, online play has been extremely smooth and almost seamless. When a player joins a session, the game pauses for just a few seconds before getting back into the action. Several weeks after release, there is still a very healthy community and I rarely go through a play session without being joined midway.

Final Fight: Double Impact represents both great value and possibly the best arcade game emulation on a home console to date, including excellent netcode from GGPO. Magic Sword and Final Fight are both great games and different enough from each other to keep the package from feeling stale.

Positives:

+ Excellent Emulation, “Arcade Perfect” Performance
+ Arcade Cabinet Display Mode
+ Nearly Seamless Online Play
+ Remixed Audio Sounds Fantastic
+ Vault Challenges Add Replay Value

Negatives:

– Both Games Last Under an Hour Each

This colourful and addictive score attack game is perfect for short play sessions. Fruit Ninja features good graphics, convincing physics and a simple, fast paced game play mechanic that can be controlled with one finger.

Various types of fruit including pineapples, strawberries, bananas and plums will be lobbed from the bottom of the screen and you must slice them by swiping a finger or thumb across your screen before they fall.  Your game well end when three pieces of fruit fall off the screen or if you accidentally slice bombs that appear once in awhile.

The game will begin by lobbing a single piece of fruit, but will quickly begin throwing up to a half dozen fruits and bombs at once or firing many in succession. As you play, you will randomly score critical hits that are worth ten points. Slicing a fruit with a normal hit is worth a solitary point.

Fruit Ninja features integration of the popular OpenFeint service to include a set of achievements, friend lists and online leaderboards. It also has Twitter and Facebook integration, though I did not personally test these two features.

The game runs in a 3D engine capable of realistic physics. Sliced fruit falls differently depending on how it is cut and it leaves the juices splatters on a wall in the background. Each fruit makes a different sound effect when sliced and the game provides an audio queue when a bomb is lobbed into the playfield.

Though Fruit Ninja is meant to be played in short bursts, I found it hard to put down at times. The simple concept of  “slice fruit, score points” proved compelling thanks to a great presentation, online features and precise control.

Positives:

+ Addictive Score Attack Gameplay
+ Great Graphics and Physics
+ Simple Mechanic, Can be Played with One Finger
+ Online Leaderboards, Achievements and Friends through OpenFeint

Negatives:

– Only One Mode of Play

Alien Zombie Death is a classic arcade-style shooter that features a good variety of enemy types and level designs. You must navigate platform structures while destroying waves of enemies to survive and building your combo meter to obtain high scores.

The game’s 14 levels are unlocked by obtaining medals as you play. These medals are awarded for destroying a set number of enemies, collecting coins and reaching certain scores. Each level has eight medals to collect and it will take you a while to earn them all.

Horizontal and vertical movement can be controlled with the d-pad or analog stick and you fire weapons left and right using the square and circle buttons respectively. You can also move vertically using the cross and triangle buttons.

The longer you survive in a level, the more enemies will appear. Obstacles like moving electrical fields and indestructible saw blades will also begin to appear, making navigation more treacherous. There are three weapon pickups to help you along the way, though they only last for a few seconds.

Every few levels new enemy types will be added to the mix including larger boss type enemies, each with a unique behaviour and attack pattern. Some levels are wide and flat, while others are tall and skinny and some have pre existing obstacles. This diversity helps keep the game fresh and made me want to collect as many medals on each level as possible.

The game looks great on both the PSP and PS3 and features detailed character and background art, as well as lots of onscreen enemies. The sound effects are good and feature distinct audio cues for collectibles and enemies appearing, though there is no music to speak of.

Alien Zombie Death is an addictive shooting experience that provides good value at a $3.99 price point. It can be played in short sessions as a portable game, or for long periods of time on the couch at home.

Positives:

+ Fast-Paced and Challenging Gameplay
+ Lots of Unique Enemy Types
+ Large Number of Medal to Earn
+ Great Graphics

Negatives:

– Weapon Power-Ups are Ineffective
– No Music

Vector TD is a simple and stylish fixed path tower defense game. It features eight maps spread across three difficulties, each with 50 waves of enemy Vectoids to destroy using 11 upgradeable tower types.

There is no story or overarching narrative to speak of in Vector TD, you simply select the map you want to play and begin. You can trigger enemy waves manually, meaning you have plenty of time between waves to strategize and upgrade your towers. Once the enemy wave has started, the action is real-time and cannot be stopped. You can also chose to have enemy waves advance automatically.

A queue will tell you what type of Vectoid is coming in the next wave. There are seven conventional enemy types such as those that travel quickly and those resistant to certain types of tower attack. Every five waves, a larger boss Vectoid will appear.

Destroying this boss earns an Energy Cell that can be used to purchase special upgrades like a tower that increases the strength of others around it or a permanent upgrade that grants you more resources at the end of a wave.

You begin the game with 20 lives and will lose one every time an enemy reaches the end of the path. Enemies will loop through the map if they aren’t destroyed.

Vector TD looks great on both the PSP and PS3 thanks to a clean and simple retro style that resembles Geometry Wars or Tempest. Enemies and towers are easy to see and the game runs smoothly at all times. There are also some nice explosion effects thrown in for good measure.

The music in Vector TD is good and seems to evolve as you play, however the solitary techno track loops too often for my taste. There are no sound effects for weapons fire or enemies being destroyed, so the soundscape feels thin overall.

Players looking for a solid, challenging, no-frills tower defense game will likely enjoy Vector TD, however it is somewhat light on content and does little to advance the genre.

Positives:

+ Clean, Stylish Look
+ Solid Tower Defense with Good Tower Upgrade System
+ Great Difficulty Progression

Negatives:

– Little Originality
– Only Eight Maps with no Variations
– No Sound Effects, Music Loops too Often

Despite a dated look and some jarring performance issues, Anarchy: Rush Hour provides a ton of content at a reasonable price and some cheesy, over-the-top fun. For $7.99 you are getting a full-fledged open world arcade racer that takes queues from series like Need for Speed, Burnout and Midnight Club.

Anarchy: Rush Hour is a port of the 2007 PC game Streets of Moscow. You play as Max, a street racer from St. Petersburg forced into the seedy underworld in an attempt to recover his kidnapped girlfriend, as well as a valuble experimental rocket engine.

There are a wide variety of race types in Anarchy: Rush Hour including Checkpoint races that have you zig-zagging around the city and Crash events that ask you to wreak havoc on both opponents and unsuspecting civilians. You can also enter Fastest Lap, Knockout and Drag races in addition to traditional Circuit and Point-to-Point events.

Story and side races are scattered around the map, but can also be accessed via an in-game e-mail system that gets cluttered very quickly. You can start a Quick Race from the main menu or play local or online multiplayer sessions with up to eight racers, though in my experience it was tough to get an online race together because of a seemingly sparse community.

Anarchy: Rush Hour employs a risk vs. reward system similar to Burnout. Adrenalin is gained by performing reckless acts like driving the wrong way into traffic, drifting and overtaking of opponents. Players can then use Adrenalin to power Adrenalin Devices like a shockwave that knocks opponents out of the way and one that repairs your vehicle. There are also a ramming device and one that lets you jump, flip and spin through the air.

In between races you can visit the garage. Here you can purchase a new cars, upgrade Adrenalin Devices and customize the look and tuning of your vehicle with money that you earn by racing. Purchased devices carried over to all cars and handling can be tweaked by swapping tires.

Though ported from a PC game that is now several years old, the PlayStation 3 version of Anarchy: Rush Hour suffers from frequent and grating pop-in, frame drops, tearing and slowdown.  I was able to tolerate the issues and the game was never unplayable, however many racing game fans will be frustrated by performance that struggles to maintain 30 fps.

The graphics themselves are acceptable, especially for a downloadable game. Though the city of Moscow is sparsely rendered, it is large and filled with traffic. Car models are adequately detailed and the game has three camera views. The whole package looks like an upscaled PlayStation 2 title with a few modern lighting and motion blur effects.

At the Medium difficulty, I found Anarchy: Rush Hour extremely easy. The opponent AI simply does not drive very well, making for a lot of uneventful races. The game does employ a rubber band effect that allows opponents to magically catch up to you, which is always extremely frustrating. There is a police presence in the game as well, however it is inconsequential.

The controls and physics in Anarchy: Rush hour fall squarely into unrealistic, arcade-style territory. Civilian cars bounce off of yours like cardboard boxes and after a few upgrades you can literally steer your car in mid air and perform flips using Adrenalin Devices.

Control is typical of modern racers and uses the R2 and L2 buttons for gas and breaks respectively. Adrenalin Devices are mapped to the d-pad, while boost and the handbrake are activated with face buttons. The game also supports the use of a racing wheel, though I did not test this feature much. I simply prefer playing this type of racer with a standard controller.

Aside from offering great value for those that can stomach its look and performance, Anarchy: Rush Hour features a surprisingly large soundtrack that offers music from a variety of genres including hard rock, trance and hip-hop. You can also use the Custom Soundtrack feature, which is somewhat novel among PlayStation Network titles.

Players seeking a wallet-friendly downloadable racer should find hours of fun in Anarchy: Rush Hour; as long as they know what they’re in for and keep expectations low. Fans willing to spend a few extra dollars would be better off downloading Burnout Paradise or WipEout HD, both of which are available on Playstation Network for under $20 each.

Positives:

+ Lots of Content for $7.99
+ Wide Variety of Race Types
+ Over-the-Top Adrenalin Devices
+ Allows Custom Soundtrack

Negatives:

– Severe Performance Issues
– Too Easy to Go Off Course
– Rubber Band AI
– Sparse Online Community
– In-Game E-Mail System gets Cluttered Quickly