Wreckless: The Yakuza Missions

"Stop the headache..."

When I saw the commercials I thought, ''Hey, this seems kind of cool.'' Granted, all I saw were the X-Box commercials. They featured a blurry, metallic oval smashing into various things. For whatever reason, I still thought this was cool. I'm glad I didn't pay for this game.

-Graphics: 7/10

I liked the graphics in this game. They weren't the greatest graphics ever, but they were the only redeeming quality of this game. The cars looked pretty good, and the whole city was very nicely done, in my opinion. I don't know why the rest of the game wasn't this good.

-Sound: 5/10

I only became aware of the actual sound in the first few minutes. Then everything became a cacophony of tremendous proportions. I was told that each item had its own impact sound. I couldn't have figured this out since you happen to hit some many different things at once, all of the sound becomes one long screech. Wait no — that was my own screeching.

-Music: 4/10

I could almost never hear the music over the 'sounds.' When I did, I wish I'd hadn't. It's not like its horrible music. Wait, no — it IS horrible music. It's pretty annoying after the first few minutes. Then it just keeps going and going. I like to turn the music off, which basically means putting the TV on mute. It's okay, I'm not missing anything.

-Controls: 3/10

I like the way my car turns like a boat. It's cool how even though I'm not touching the analog stick or D-Pad, my car drifts off into oncoming traffic. It's a challenge to steer your car in a straight line. I do find that the Oil Tanker has the best handling, oddly enough.

-Game Play: 5/10

I admire anyone who can actually play this game for more than ten minutes. That takes skill and determination. You have to be able to restrain yourself from throwing the controller at the screen or small animal. I know I couldn't.

The game's plot (or lack thereof) seems to be centered around taking down the Yakuza. You play as either two dumb female cops or two dumb male spies. The two cops are your typical Japanese anime-style girls. One of the spies looks like Elton John in a white suit. The other looks like Jaws from Moonraker. How you take down the Yakuza is pretty simple. Basically you careen around the city and smash into things. You're actually not supposed to hit things (unless the mission calls for it), but you will anyway. There's no way to avoid. One of the secondary missions was to actually hit around 250 objects. That was no trouble at all. It should have been to NOT hit 250 objects. That would have been damn near impossible, and may have kept me playing the game.

-Overall: 3/10

I'd say basically, this game sucks. Though it is better than the X-Box version, which is hard to believe. In the X-Box version you had no missiles or multi-player. Which means in order to kill the enemy in most of the missions, you had to repeatedly slam into them. Doesn't seem too hard, since I already do that constantly by accident.

The multi-player is a feature I don't think I could have done without. It's not good multi-player, it's not even kind of good multi-player. It's so damn fun, though. It's laughably bad, but I always play it with my brother. All of the scenarios are ridiculously hard and the game glitches out a lot. Sometimes other cars may just drive through walls or spontaneous explode. I don't now what keeps me attracted to it, but it's hard to keep a straight face while playing. Not to mention the one-screen deal. Usually multi-player games give you a split-screen view. Not Wreckless, though. This game gives you one screen with the camera revolving around the two cars in a desperate attempt to display both of them. If you go off-screen, you're screwed.

Like 'Speedy Bus,' where one player plays as a bus loaded with a bomb that goes off if the bus goes to slow while the other player plays as an armored vehicle that is supposed to push other cars out of the way. I've found that the player driving the armored vehicle is virtually useless. You can never plow through the other cars even though smashing into them proves to be a focal part of the game. When the bus goes too slow the bomb explodes and a message appears saying, ''BOOM too slow!'' Not only that, but after the bomb goes off the bus can continue driving. Painful, yet oddly fun.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 02/07/03, Updated 02/07/03