Speed Punks
Score: 95% ESRB: Everyone Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment America Developer: Funcom Media: CD/1 Players: 1 - 2 (1 - 4 Multitap) Genre: Racing (Kart)
Graphics & Sound: The graphics in Speed Punks are absolutely gorgeous, with little to no frame-rate drop. Each track has its own visual style, and although some of them are merely pretty, others are absolutely fantastic. This game, like Vagrant Story, shows just what the aging PlayStation hardware can do when pushed to its limits. When four players are racing, some of the graphical glory is cut out in favor of higher frame-rates, but with the small boxes representing the screens, you won't really notice. The only real problem with the graphics is that the meters don't scale terribly well to the small screens of multi-player, obscuring more of the track than I would have liked. A minor gripe, though. The character design is certainly... unique, to say the least, with a bunch of kids that look like Rayman rejects (in a good way), lacking connecting bits between their extremities. The sound in the game is fair but not really memorable, with the requisite booms and smashes and pumping music that every good kart racer needs. You probably won't be humming the tunes afterwards, however.
Gameplay: You'll be too busy drooling over the gameplay. This game, like Crash Team Racing before it, doesn't really offer anything new to the genre. Pick a racer, each with their own settings of speed, control, and whatnot, and set off to complete on a few tracks. Use pickups (missiles, bombs, and weird devices that basically equate to the Black Ball of Doom from CTR) to knock your opponents out of commission so you can take first place. It's been done before, many times, and the genre is getting stale. But Speed Punks is just so damned fun. Each track has its own unique style, and you have to genuinely race differently on each one. Along with that, as you complete laps on each track, shortcuts open up, enabling you to skip major portions of the track to get ahead of opponents who don't know any better. This is good and bad; good for the person who has played the game a few times and knows where all the shortcuts are, bad for the newbie who hasn't been able to mess around much yet. In all fairness, let each new player race a few times to get the hang of each track so that they know the shortcuts. The computer A.I. actually uses its items relatively intelligently. They'll shoot you with their machine guns, blow you away with their missiles, and use their boost power to zoom ahead of you. Unlike CTR, where you gained boosts by power-sliding at every chance and jumping, in Speed Punks, little icons appear on the maps that you can pick up to gain boost energy. You can use the boost, like in F-Zero and F-Zero X, to zoom past your opponents, but it drains pretty rapidly. Judicious use will make or break you. Every time you complete a track, you get ranked. Get enough points to win the league, and you can go on to the next one. Yes, there are hidden tracks and hidden players. Aren't there always? Along with this, if you do well enough on the tracks, secret game modes will open up for even more fun. What kart racing is really about, however, is multi-player. Speed Punks supports the multitap, and it's an absolute blast. Blowing your opponents away has never been so fun in a kart game. Multi-player is where Speed Punks really shines, as it doesn't have the full-featured Adventure Mode that kept us entertained in CTR when we didn't have friends around. Mind you, the single-player game is still great fun, but not as much so.
Difficulty: The game starts out pretty easy, but it ramps pretty damned rapidly. You'll find yourself getting left in the dust as you go up in the leagues, and you'll have to really strategize to win the courses. Enough practice, though, and it's not impossible. The multi-player difficulty, of course, is all dependent on just how good your human opponents are. Once again, make sure you let them race the track once so you can at least show them the shortcuts, unless you like cheap wins. You're not going to show them, are you? Dirty bastards.
Game Mechanics: The controls in Speed Punks are spot-on, whether you use analog or digital. I found myself switching between the two, depending on just how wiggly the track was and my mood. The use of the shoulder buttons for sliding, boosting, and weapons might take a second to get used to, but once you do, it becomes second nature. The menus get the job done, and the character select screen is pretty cute, although you can't see the stats in any mode but single-player... small gripe. If you like the genre, want to get into the genre, or like fun party games, Speed Punks is for you. Hell, even if you don't like the genre, Speed Punks may change your mind. Get it now.
-Sunfall to-Ennien, GameVortex Communications AKA Phil Bordelon
Spin Jam Silhouette Mirage