Ta wapo
Fun arcady racing game.
Bill Gates' favorite original Xbox game. That says a lot, does it? A very 2000's game in terms of tone, but you get the sense that this is an expansion pack / 'here we are' title to Bizarre's previous racer, Metropolis Street Racer on the Dreamcast. Still, incredibly promising and a fun game on its own merits.
A fun game for a bit, but there are better racing games out there.
If you like arcade racers, definitely one to check out. Just make sure you don't play it on Xbox 360, because the slowdown is like having someone inject you with hallucinogens while you're trying to drive.
I maintain that this video game is a masterclass in arcade racer track design, but a touchy handling model and overly aggressive AI emerged as two major frustrations for me, and the grindy second half of the game completely sunk it.
An essentially perfect balance of arcade and sim-y racer imo. The mid-game section gets pretty hard but I always kept coming back to see if I could clear it, and eventually I did! Racing well isn't the only thing you have to do to win, since you have to drive stylishly to earn kudos points in order to actually win events. Mixing the more grounded and weighty controls that you would expect in a more serious sim racer with a point system that favors combos in a very tony-hawk esque style results in a game I can't get enough of. This game could absolutely be perfected if they changed the way that kudos are actually accumulated in your total though, since it seems like it only counts the highest total from each event and adds it to create your total. If it were accumulative and even kudos from failed runs counted to the total I think that would help the pacing. Other than that, I think this is the best launch title on the Xbox. Yes, even better than Halo.
Impressive game at the time with great physics, soundtrack and especially graphics and car models. The game will break your fucking balls at every chance it gets.
Really fun racing game that kicked off a great series.