One of the most unique racing games I've ever played is the original Tokyo Xtreme Racer (TXR) for Dreamcast. In that game, you start out with a mere $25,000 and use it to purchase a starter car. Then you hit the mean streets of Tokyo, looking for punks in one of several rival gangs to challenge. Once you come across a rival, you flash your lights at them to challenge them to a duel. Win the race, and you take home cash to upgrade your existing car or purchase a new one. By racing other rivals, you can eventually wipe out entire gangs and compete against other super-fast challengers.
So to me it's very disappointing to see how Street Supremacy, which was released in Japan as an entry in the TXR series (I'm guessing Crave owns US rights to the name since they have a PS2 title on the way), turned out. While the soul of the series is still there, the technical execution of it is disappointing in so many ways.
As I mentioned, the soul of the Tokyo Xtreme Racer experience is still here, and in fact has been beefed up quite a bit. The meat of the game is found in the Team Rumble mode (basically the game's career mode), which is basically divided into before and after you gain control of your gang. You start out with a small sum of cash to purchase a car with, and then join one of several rival gangs battling over control of different sections of the city. Each virtual day you choose an area to race in, and then try to defeat other opponents to earn cash and experience points. If you choose to race in an area controlled by your team, you'll also have the option of battling opponents within the team to improve your overall ranking.
However, races aren't won or lost in a traditional manner. They basically play out like fights in a fighting game, with a Spirit meter acting as the life bar. The trailing racer loses spirit based on the distance between cars, and both racers lose spirit each time they hit each other, the wall, or other cars on the track. The first car to lose all spirit loses the race, so technically it is possible to be in the lead and yet still lose if you hit something. This can lead to some thrilling races at times, but more often than not one opponent will simply pull away from the other and never look back.
As you earn cash you'll have the means to purchase better parts for your car (or entirely new cars), and earning experience points gives you the experience needed to make use of these higher level parts. Each car can be upgraded in a number of different areas (engine, transmission, body parts, etc.), which is fairly deep but presented in an easy to understand manner. The game continues for several hours in this manner, with you occasionally being drafted into team battles by your gang's leader.
These team battles are 5 vs. 5, with the winning team controlling the area. The first competitor on each team races, and then the winner moves on to face the second competitor on the other team. The battle continues in this way until one team has beaten the other team's leader, and thus taken control of the area. Since the spirit meter is cumulative in these (spirit lost in one race carries over to the next), even with a dominant car it's hard to go more than several races. So it's important to have strong CPU teammates on your team to finish up the job.
Eventually you work your way up to the top of the team and take over control of it. Once you control the team, you get to decide what areas to invade. Once you're the head honcho, racing and defeating individual members of other teams will also allow you to then recruit them to join your team. Therefore, before invading a rival team's turf it's a good idea to first recruit several of their high-ranking members. Additionally, you can race members of your team to build up their loyalty to you, and failing to do so will eventually result in members with lower loyalty to you defecting to other teams.
On the whole the Team Rumble mode is pretty deep and provides hours of gaming, but it's executed so poorly that you'll have a hard time sitting through all of it. The most obvious problem is that the cars control like bricks. I'm not even talking about "realistic" handling either; it's virtually impossible to make even the most gradual of turns without practically putting the car into neutral. Since the cars don't take physical damage when hitting the wall, the best strategy is to bounce through each turn without losing too much spirit meter. While this isn't necessarily a terrible thing (not every game has to be realistic), the cars simply handle way too poorly to ignore it. Additionally, since spirit meter loss is cumulative in team battles, it can make you feel cheated by forcing you to lose battles you should've otherwise won easily.
Aside from control problems, the other major problem here is the load times. They're ridiculously long, and happen at almost every point in the game. Just getting through a team battle is brutal; since each team has up to five members, you're often forced to sit through 6 or 7 races you aren't even racing in before it's over. While you can skip directly to the results of these races, there is still a 10 second or so load time between each one. If EA can simulate an entire 16 game football season with 32 different teams without the player having to choose to skip each game separately, it should've been easy to do here. You also face long load times moving from day to day (which you have to do to race in other areas), entering a different part of the map, and loading up a "Live" view of each competitor (why you can't just skip this is beyond me) when choosing who to race against. There are other little load times spread throughout the game (such as going to the System menu to save/load data), which just add to the overall misery.
Graphically and aurally, Street Supremacy is solid. The cars look about like what you'd expect from a PSP title, but the environments are a little too dark and devoid of activity despite the fact you're racing at night. Aside from rather average buildings and other objects closest to the sides of the road, the rest of the screen is shrouded in pitch-black darkness (in some areas the entire screen is black except the track itself and HUD). Also, there's a lot of seaming (when little lines show up between polygons) at high speeds in the roads too. The menu system is actually very nice (lots of bold colors and flashy graphics), but since it only contributes to the long load times I won't praise it too much. The sound effects are your basic car sounds and get the job done, but the music is an appropriate mix of pulse-pounding rock and techno. I actually liked the soundtrack quite a bit.
Bottom Line:
In many ways I'm directly in this game's target market; I enjoy the slower progression of the TXR series, and since I'm an avid RPG fan I have more patience to put up with the load times and upgrades than most. Yet even I cannot overlook the glaring problems this game has. If you dig this sort of thing you will certainly have some fun with the deep and addictive career mode, but most racing fans should pass even with the budget $29.99 MSRP.
| Pros: | Cons: | Final Score: |
|---|---|---|
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| 5.0 |
Posted: 2006-03-25 11:23:25 PST