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Suzuki Alstare Racing Review
Noel Brady
00/12/0000
More of a push-bike then a superbike I'm afraid.
Suzuki Alstare Extreme Racing is the game originally known as Redline Racer. If four wheels aren't your thing and you don't want to join the alarmingly high motorcycle death statistics by riding those nasty, dangerous, real-life motorcycles, this game should be right up your street. Suzuki Alstare is from the team that brought us the slightly disappointing Trickstyle. A game which brought shimmer to our eyes with it's graphics but made our hearts sick with it's poor gameplay.
The main part of a racer is it's speed, and Suzuki Alstare does not come second in this race. Criteron states that it's one player mode runs at 60fps while the multiplayer game plays at 30fps which is pretty impressive, but the problem is that there is no real feel of speed generated so you might as well be cycling a Raleigh Activator as a Kawaski 1000. Gameplay is strictly in the arcade racer camp, with strict time limits being imposed on each track, with players having to reach a number of checkpoints along the way. The tracks follow the usual generic conventions by including desert (Devil's Canyon), countryside (Tudor Hill) and beach (Sea Fall Bay) tracks. It's not long though before you find your mind wandering away from the track and the TV to your surroundings as you go through yet another boring chicane.
Given the title of a 'next-generation' racing title, you would expect Suzuki Alstare to be of Gran Turismo quality with powerful graphics and dynamic cars, but it's not. Instead we are instead presented with a dated and wholly substandard racer with sloppy graphics, choppy animation and monotonous sound effects. This title originally appeared on the PC last year to mixed reviews and although new features have been added to the Dreamcast version, it has a slightly rushed feel about it. The game is riddled with bugs. Driving through objects becomes easy with this title and you often fall off your bike to miraculously appear on it a second later, these are just some of the problems that we spotted in the gameplay.
Biking fans have waited many years for a realistic sim of their sport and it looks like they'll have to go on waiting a while longer. After such failed attempts as Moto Racer 2 and Jeremy's McGrath's SuperCross, our hopes were high for Suzuki Alstare Racing. However, while the graphics are good, the gameplay is very, very poor. In fact this title probably rates among the worst that we have seen so far on the Dreamcast. It's one that definitely doesn't come recommended.
