Reviewed by Tiffany Craig
Every Saturday I’m whisked off on a merry adventure around Wigan to learn how to drive. I pay someone to teach me the finer points of clutch control and dodging children since my temperament is slightly explosive. The fear has been that I would be the ultimate screaming embodiment of road rage and it would become so legendary that my as yet to be conceived grandchildren wouldn’t be allowed to come within 5 feet of a car. Surprisingly that hasn’t been the case. I’m actually very cautious and haven’t yet threatened to punch any Australians. Where I am insane and homicidal is in the privacy of my own apartment, where howling rarely means handcuffs. And those examples of frustration have become more frequent since I started playing Cross Racing Championship 2005.
Playing CRC as a driver on the first track would be as if a driving school would have sat me in my Ford Focus the first lesson and said “Ok now, drive as fast as you can and try to find 5th gear. Oh, by the way, we don’t just have power steering; we have insanely sensitive omniscient steering that will flip the car if you scowl at it. So have fun and here’s your helmet.” The controls are exceedingly sensitive but are at a bare minimum intuitive. I went to have a nostalgic attempt at Test Drive 1 after being thrashed and discovered everything except shifting is exactly the same.
I beat my little pimped out Corus against railings, cars, tires and markers. I didn’t manage to scrape off the hood though. After about the 10th time of failing at the first career race I started threatening my indifferent little girl racer. It was only the lure of sponsorship that kept me driving. The competitive part of me wanted a better engine and some additional stickers to slap on my Voodoo paint job. For time 20 I copied some of my The Who mp3s to the music folder along with the game choice of Hungarian band Szeg and came in 4th again. Then I gave up on career mode.
But even the individual races didn’t work out, and there are 60 of them across six different environments. I was beaten by a bunch of professionals, flipped my car several times and ended up in the middle of a field next to a bunch of guys who looked incredibly unimpressed whilst the Australian shouted ‘PLAYER HAS MISSED THE CHECKPOINT.’
The problem with most racing games is they don’t do much to get beginners into the fun. Well, if there is any fun to be had. I suspect a large part of development has nothing to do with fun but now encompasses that thing known as ‘realism.’ As long as the grass looks green, every blade is rendered, the car handles like a car and the announcer sounds bored the game will be released. But what they lack in joy they do achieve with the fantastic graphics. On a budget GEForce 5200 the tracks are stunning and obviously crafted by a devoted art and development team. The dust that the cars in front kicked up made it really difficult to see and the physics are a marvelous example of how far the game industry’s accuracy really has come.
My lack of attention span only really says that this game is not for beginners. Racing and driving games enthusiasts should really enjoy it. However, I think I’ll stick to the Mario Kart franchise; Koopa Kastle may not be easy but at least I know I have a few levels before I get there.
Special thanks to Ruth Chaloner at Chaloner Associates and Invictus Games for providing a copy of this title.
Minimum system requirements:
- Windows 98, 2000, XP
- Pentium IV 1.4 GHz or AMD 1.4 GHz CPU
- 256MB Ram (512 for XP)
- 700 MB of free hard drives space
- NVIDIA GeForce 2 MX 400 or ATI Radeon 8500
- DirectX 9.0 Compatible Sound card