Smashing Drive

"Mediocre the first time through, craptastic after that."

Introduction

Smashing Drive for the GameCube is supposedly a taxi cab game. However, this title is little more than a racing game where you must get from point A to point B. Sure you do get to pick up fares, but you pick them up immediately after you begin the course and they always want to go to the same place. Perhaps I would have enjoyed the game more if it had been presented as it should have been, but it wasn't. When I first played the game, I went in expecting a taxi cab game, and what I got was a mediocre at best racing game. I believe first impressions are very important, and the one I got from this game was not good at all. So without further to do, here is the review.

Replay Value: 10/40

A game's replay value is the most important thing to me. Smashing Drive just didn't supply me with the replay value I was looking for. There is a multi-player mode and the game does keep track of your best scores so you can always try to do better, but these features just weren't very entertaining. Unless both players are good at the game, multi-player isn't very interesting and often results in one player slaughtering the other. As I said the game isn't very entertaining, and trying to beat your own high scores is boring because of this.

Gameplay: 15/40

Perhaps the replay value of this game would have been better if the gameplay was better or at least more entertaining. This game offers three different shifts: Early Bird (easy), Rush Hour (medium), and Night Owl (hard). In the beginning, only Early Bird is accessible. After you beat Early Bird you unlock Rush Hour, and you unlock Night Owl by beating Rush Hour. By clearing all three shifts, you unlock a reward course called Dusked and Wired. There are three races between you and a rival cabby for each shift, but Dusked and Wired is just one race that is a little longer than the other ones. After clearing all shifts and beating Dusked and Wired, you watch the credits roll. That's it! The gameplay is okay the first time through, but after that it just feels boring and more of the same. Another downfall is that the first time through only lasts 2 hours at the most. The power-ups do add a little variety to the game, but the power-ups not enough to save this game.

Sound: 2/10

Sound consists of Music and Sound Effects so I have broken this portion of the review into 2 different sections.

Music: 0/5

Please, no more! It burns! The music in this game is...terrible! There is not a better word that could have described the music. I guess some people might like the music, but I couldn't stand it myself. I'm sorry to say that music isn't really my thing so I can't really describe it, but raise the score to a 4 or 5 if you do like that kind of music. I don't like the music and this is my review so I give the music a zero.

Sound Effects: 2/5

The sound effects are alright, but half of the time you can't hear them. Sometimes I guess the game is just processing to much and the sound effects end up getting cut out. Many times I'll find myself using the power of the sonic horn, one of the power ups, but I won't actually hear the horn as I'm supposed to. The sound effects could have been better, but they aren't there half of the time anyway so it doesn't really matter.

Graphics: 7/10

In my opinion, graphics are the least important part of a game. That's to bad for this game because the graphics are the best part. The game runs at a smooth frame rate, but there is often slowdown when to much is happening on screen. This slow down is also what causes the loss of sound effects. The graphics could have been better, but they are fine as they are. In the end, the slowdown is the only thing that brought this rating down.

Overall: 3/10

10/40 + 15/40 + 2/10 + 7/10 = 34/100 = 3.4/10 rounded down to 3/10

Final Recommendations

Rent this game if and only if you must. You can get everything you'll want out of this game within 2 hours of gameplay. I hope this review has convinced you not to make the same mistake as I did by buying it.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 04/12/04