"Is it as good as Crus'n USA? Not Quite but......."

California Speed is just another racing game out there. It seems like it is trying to cash in on Crus'n USA and San Francisco Rush, which are both spectacular racing games. There is only one question.... can it fill the shoes of either one of those games? Well at first the game seems as though it might, with some original ideas and some neat tracks, but after a while you can see some major similarities between this game and many other games. At first glance this is a great game, but will it continue to be fun after a while? The answer is probably not due to the fact that there are just better games out there that you can play.

PROS:
There are a total of fourteen total tracks, and most of them have some kind of weird theme to them.
There is a good selection of cars for you to choose from, but not nearly what Grand Tourismo has, but will any game have that much?
There are a ton of shortcuts for you to change your position from last to first in almost no time.

CONS:
It is pretty much a clone of Crus'n USA and San Francisco Rush mixed together.

GRAPHICS: 7/10
This is one of the major reasons that this game seems like a clone, the graphics of the tracks seem to be dead on Crus'n USA and the graphics of the cars look almost exactly like San Francisco Rush. The background graphics seem to be pretty well done, and the track graphics are decent, but not a great selling point for this game. The graphics for all of the objects on the side of the roads are just flat trees and any other object there are flat. The graphics for the crashes could be better done, they just seem like they are kind of unrealistic because you will almost always wreck and land and continue to drive. All around the graphics are above average, but not great.

MUSIC: 7/10
California Speed has just a normal racing soundtrack, it has its catchy songs and its songs that get annoying fast. There is a fair share of both in California Speed. You think by now a game company could come up with a racing game with a great soundtrack with some big name bands on the label. For some reason no game has ever really done that. Once again the music is good, maybe a little bit better than average, but it does not leave too much to be desired.

SOUND EFFECTS: 5/10
There are not really any great sound effects in the game. Every now and then you might hear a waterfall in the background or some kind of bleeping sounds when you enter a new area. Lets not forget about the same old engine sound that has appeared in many other racing games. There is not really too much to brag about for this game.

CONTROLS: 9/10
The controls for this game are extremely simple and easy to learn. Once you get them down they are easy to remember and master, the only somewhat hard part about this game is trying to switch gears at the right time if you are using manual transmission, which most people do not have to worry about because they use automatic. It is also hard to recover from a crash quickly some times. But all in all, this game is one of the easier racing games that you can get.

GAME PLAY: 10/10
This is a very fun game to play. It is especially fun if you like to play racing games. If you like the controls of Crus'n USA with some of the all around fun of San Francisco Rush, then you would probably like this game. One of the better features is the fact that you can customize your car to exactly how you like it. This feature can add quite a bit to the re-play value for a game. This is just an al around fun game to play, even if you are not a big fan of the racing genre.

RE-PLAY VALUE: 8/10
Like most racing games, it will either have a really high re-play value or a really low re-play value. If it were not for the sheer number of tracks and cars, along with customizing your car it would be one of those games with a low re-play value, but it does have those features and it does have a high re-play value. You will most likely play this game for a little while, but after about a month or so you will get tired of it and move on, but you will eventually find out that you have a good game in your collection.

STORY LINE: 5/10
Choose a car, with this car you will go to a certain track located exclusively in California, you will start out in last position. From there you must fight to get to the front of the pack by using one of the many short cuts in each level, once you are there you will try to stay there at all cost. If you are one of the chosen few you will win the race. After that you will go on to another course and you will have to start the whole process all over again. Once you have won all of the races you will have become a master, and should start it all over again with a different car. Once you have beaten it with all of the cars you will be with out a doubt the greatest racer of all time. There is not much else for you to do once you have done that, and that is pretty much the whole story line.

ENDING: 5/10
What ending? At the end of each race, you will see a couple of bikini clad women that are pretty much asking you to stare at two body parts. (That part I give a ten). But in the terms of weather or not they did a good job with ending up the game with some kind of video of a car flying off of a cliff going 200 miles per hour and landing on the other side. If that would be in the game then the ending would have been much much better.

CHEATS: 7/10
There really are not too many cheats in the game, the ones that you do have are decent and add some sort of fun factor to the game. But all around there really is not any great cheats for you to do. I would have likes to see some more cheats, but there were not any great ones.

CHALLENGE: 5/10
Like most of the racing games out there, this game is not too much of a challenge. With all of the short cuts and the high speeds it is easy to win most of the races. There are a few hard tracks to play on but over all it is an easy game to play and to beat.

ORIGINALITY: 3/10
The only thing that is saving this game is some of the special cars that you can get. Like I was saying before this game is pretty much just a clone of Crus'n USA and San Fransisco Rush, and this is the category that would hurt this game, and it does. I kind of wish that if the developers had spent more time on originality, then this game would be much better.

BUY RENT?:
I definitely think that this game is worth a rent. If you like the game then you might want to think about buying it. If you do not like the game then you really should not buy it, there is nothing spectacular that it offers, but it is still a great game.

RE-CAP:

GRAPHICS: 7/10
MUSIC: 7/10
SOUND EFFECTS: 5/10
CONTROLS: 9/10
GAMEPLAY: 10/10
REPLAY VALUE: 8/10
STORY LINE: 5/10
ENDING: 5/10
CHEATS: 7/10
CHALLENGE: 5/10
ORIGINALITY: 3/10

OVERALL: 7/10

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 04/23/01, Updated 04/23/01