Smashing Drive

"A terrible port of a good arcade game"

One of the few times I went to an arcade last year, I had a hard time finding games worth spending my credits on, even though I was given $20 worth of them. Smashing Drive was one of the few that I actually sat down and tried to progress through. I was fun for a racing game, it had pretty good graphics, and the action was pretty cool. I liked it even better than Crazy Taxi. When I talked my brother into renting this game for the Game Cube today, I was in for a very big disppointment. Poor graphics and mediocre game play really ruined this game, and left it with only one real saving grace which I will talk about later.

Concept: 8/10
I thought this game had a pretty interesting concept in the arcade. You go around in this weird taxi that can grow wings or monster truck tires and try to get your customer from point A to point B before the other cab. Though you don’t actually see the customers get in and out of the cab in the Game Cube port, I still think it is an interesting concept.

Graphics: 1/10
For shame Namco. This port had terrible graphics and looked more like something you’d see on Nintendo 64 than on the 128-bit Game cube. The graphics were pretty good in the arcade, I don’t understand why they couldn’t get closer to that with the Game Cube.

Sound: 10/10
Yeah, the sound effects were mediocre, and there was only one song, but the song was hilarious. And it only gets funnier the more it gets repeated. Who knows what the words are, and who cares, the song has an awesome sound that sounds like Michael Bolton trying to front a hardcore industrial band. Me and my brother probably laughed about this song for about half an hour.

Gameplay: 3/10
Not much of a fun factor here, the game play seems to be extremely bland somehow. Something about how the game responds to the controls seems to be really lacking. It’s kind of cool how you jump off of cars and onto rafters and such, in fact it was one of the coolest parts in the arcade, but it just doesn’t seem as cool on the Game Cube. It’s too bad, this could have been a fun game to play with other people.

Conclusion: 5/10
It was really kind of a cheesy game, and I really wouldn’t recommend buying it. It might be worth renting if you really can’t find anything else, but otherwise this one is better off if you just avoid it.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 03/16/02, Updated 03/16/02