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Hot Wheels Turbo Racing Review
Noel Brady
00/12/0000
Imagine the chance to play with your little cars without HAVING to push them along the floor and go vroooom.
Hot Wheels Turbo Racing gives us exactly this chance taking the small four wheelers off the floor and onto our PlayStations. We may not be familiar with the franchise here in Ireland, but Hot Wheels sell like hotcakes in the US, being even bigger than the Micro Machines label that we are so used too. That's the Micro Machines toy cars and not the games for anybody who wondered.
The aim here is not necessarily to outpace your opponents, but to upend and crush them. With that kind of mission objective, you'd expect the vehicles in the game to be exceptionally manoeuverable and you wouldn't be disappointed. In other EA racers -- Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit for example -- you may well end up doing a flip, or a barrel roll, or possibly even a full somersault if you really take a jump badly. But in Hot Wheels Turbo Racing, all that happens if you take a jump well! Using the specially-designed 'E-brake' in unison with the Turbo meter, the vehicle under your control becomes a vehicle with acrobatic purpose.
Luckily, the track design is very well balanced, so the big-ass Gulch Stepper wagon can make up for time by taking the special 4X4-only shortcuts that crop up at certain points. Speaking of tracks, it's worth noting that there are 12 of them in total, ranging over four fantasy worlds: Wild West, Glacial Rift, Haunted Highway, and Volcano Island. The track names are all straight out of cuckoo-land, including the Command Center and Cold Fusion circuits, most of which are chock-full of jumping opportunities and twist and turn like snakes with appendicitis.
In essence, Hot Wheels takes the San Francisco Rush concept ā“ huge jumps and mid-air stunts ā“ to a different level. Whereas with the N64 version of San Francisco Rush you pre-planned your jump and then hoped it worked out well, Hot Wheels players actually control the cars in mid-air. The real challenge is pulling off as many tricks, combos, and stunts as possible before you land. Itās fun, but itās also really easy. The learning curve is short and the long-term play life is moderate.
Graphically, Hot Wheels goes out to impress with the tracks, and the cars are, I'm assured, modeled in great detail, faithful to the toys. That's all well and good, but doesn't help the fact that they've used a really garish color palette -- with the result that everything is a little too bright and in your face. Still, collectors of the model cars will instantly recognize all their favorites -- and now do something they'd never dream of doing with the real models -- send them flying, spinning and crashing into the tracks and other vehicles at speeds that would wreck their collection in real life.
To accompany your mid-air madness, EA has signed the usual motley crew of loud alt bands for the soundtrack, including Primus, Metallica (exclusive to the PlayStation version of the game), Meat Beat Manifesto, Mix Master Mike, Reverend Horton Heat and other such ridiculously-named DJs. Enough said, I think. Still overall, this music collection does go well with crash-and-burn racing. It certainly will attract some music aficionados to the game.
Hot Wheels Turbo Racing is definitely one for the fans of the little metal car series, but the focus on mad tricks is fun. If you wished San Francisco Rush had more control and less randomness, then youāll love this. Hot Wheels does a little of everything pretty well, but doesnāt execute everything well enough to remain a standout game for more than a month. Subtracting from the gameās allure is its competition. Subtracting from the competition though is the range of compeitition on the Playstation. Against the comptition of Gran Turismo 2, Rollcage and even Micro Machines V3, Hot Wheels Turbo Racing just doesn't have a leg to stand on, or should that be a wheel to race on
