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Dom Robinson reviews
Acclaim 
- Price: £39.99
- Players: 1-2
- Widescreen: No
- NTSC 60Hz: No
- DTS sound: No
Extreme G3 Racingwas one of my favourite racing games of 2001 and really showed what the PS2was capable of.
When the sequel, XGRA: Extreme-G Racing Association, arrived onmy doormat, I was really looking forward to testing this one out, but on loadingup the disc I couldn’t have been more disappointed.
What’s good about it? Well, the sound is nice and effective particularly on onelevel where the SFX of your bike drop away to almost nothing and the musiccranks up, as if to give it an ethereal quality.
So, what’s bad about it? Rather more…
Firstly, controlling your bike and riding along the confusing, twisted tracks does seemrather slower than before. Perhaps it’s trying to draw too far ahead at onceand the PS2 can’t handle it, but there’s definitely something not quite righthere compared to the trailblazing action that was in the previous release.The graphics are less well-defined and move like something’s holding it back.
So, not being too sure about whether it was just my imagination having bettermemories ofExtreme G3 Racingthat I did, or whether I’d seen much better games since then, in the last twoyears, I went back and had a crack at the action and once plugged in to that,my concerns were confirmed. As well as changing the controls, not allowingyou to redefine them (an option that was available in EXG3) and removing theability to slide left and right slightly, a whole different game engine hasbeen used so couple these factors together and you have a racing game whereprecision controlling is a key factor, but this sequel is actually harder tocontrol and the animation is stodgy by comparison, for a time making me feellike I was playing a Commodore 64 game(!)
On booting up the game, the glorious colours we’re used to are replaced infavour of a sparse blue background and white wireframe graphics and text, asif part of some late 70s TV programme. Everything that was so right then hasgone now.
Sorry, Acclaim, but I can’t understand why you didn’t just re-use the samegame engine and add tracks. Why try and fix what isn’t broken? This is a sadlya poor, and certainly wrong, decision and takes a definite step backwardfrom EXG3.
Go and buy the original instead.
SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC
PLAYABILITY
ENJOYMENT
OVERALL
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.