The most basic element of any racing game is a steady framerate. It doesn’t need to be blazingly fast (although that helps); just sufficient enough to create the sense that you’re actually competing in a race at the speeds the odometer says you are. Budget racer Pocket Racers fails at delivering even this most basic foundation of any racing game, and then proceeds to botch almost everything else up for good measure.
At least the premise is funny though, with a dark sorcerer invading your hip teenage party and turning you and your friends into tiny cars. Thus the player must race, race, race around his own house, winning Soul Challenges and collecting Soul Gems and Shards to win back the souls belonging to himself and his friends. Finish last, and one of your five friends will be killed, only revivable by spending a precious Soul Gem. No, none of it makes sense, but it’s entertaining at least.
Unfortunately, the game itself fails to live up to the wacky premise. Over the course of any given race, the framerate varies between being “boringly slow” and “practically unplayable”. Given that the environments themselves are fairly simple, with low-poly courses and textures that repeat throughout each level, I blame it on a combination of a low budget and the fact that it uses the Havok physics engine. In a weird way the game’s graphic simplicity is a plus, because as a result it has some of the quickest load times I’ve ever seen on the PSP.
Yes, you read that right…the developers of a $19.99 budget racing game on the PSP actually licensed the Havok engine. Now, I’m not developer, and I don’t know how much it costs to do that, but it seems like a waste to me. In theory, what they’re doing with it could’ve been cool at least, as players can use the Lightning power up to target objects such as soda cans and tools to move them around and create chaos for other drivers. Unfortunately, the actual effects of it seem random and unpredictable, generally affecting the player as much as his opponents since the same objects seem to react in totally different ways at different times. As a result, the Lightning power-up’s usefulness is really relegated to desperate last-ditch attempts at salvaging a race rather than being an integral part of gameplay. The processing power required for those fancy interactive objects also wreaks havoc with the framerate, as things slow down to a crawl any time more than one or two objects are bouncing around at the same time (particularly when other drivers are firing weapons of their own).
The other power-ups are few, consisting of a fire missile, an ice missile (temporarily turns cars into blocks of ice), nitro, and a shield that grants temporary immunity to weaponry. So of the five power-ups in the game, all three of the weapons are missile-based. Not only is there very little variety in the weapons, but also the fire and ice missiles move too slowly to be effective most of the time.
The game features 15 courses, most themed after different rooms of the house. However, rather than first building the environments and then logically adding in the courses, the developers instead seemingly built the courses and then tried to create the environments around them. What I mean is that every course seems like it was haphazardly designed in a vacuum, without care for the environment it would ultimately appear in. Then, the developers added a few objects around it after the fact, trying to make it feel like you’re racing in a kitchen, basement, etc. The result is that none of the areas actually feel like the areas they’re supposed to be, as I’ve never seen rooms in any house with layouts that looked like these.
Posted: 2006-12-18 11:37:31 PST