Rumble Racing

"A Great, Yet Very Underrated Arcade Racer"

One day, while at my local video store, I was browsing around for a PlayStation2 game to rent. I saw Rumble Racing. I had never heard of it before so I looked at the cover and back of it. It made me interested in the game. Was I dissappointed you ask? No I was not. I was actually pretty pleased after thinking that it would not be that good. Well, here is my review of it.

The gameplay is great and the controls are very good. The level designs are great. There are many alternate routes to take and they are kind of risky because some will cause you to gain ground on your competitors and some might cause you to lose ground on them. The levels are very diverse and range from a track enclosed in a coliseum to a track layed out on the beach. One of my favorite things in the game are the jumps and ramps. They are so awesome. They have some that are extremely high and sweet to ramp off of. While in the air, you can also perform tricks like rolls and flips. This also has a use. Doing enough might increase your turbo or give you turbo. Speaking of turbo, you can get turbo among other things when you pick up items that are scattered around the tracks. Pickups range from bombs to even a tornado that will knock all of the other cars out of the way.

So now you are saying to yourself, ''So the tracks are cool, so are the pickups, and even the jumps too, but what about the actual racing?''. Well, the racing is top notch. The enemy a.i. is good and is really challenging at times. When racing, there are a few modes to choose from which are Single Race and Championship. Championship will let you play a series of three courses and if you place first in them all, you can unlock a number of things such as new tracks, new cars, and new trophy races.

Speaking of new cars, the cars are great. They are more fantasy vehicles than anything. Vehicles range from hot rods, a rocketcar like thing, and even a big RV camper. Each vehicle has 3 ''phases''. You have to unlock the other phases, which are faster and look better than the previous ones.

There is also a multiplayer option in the game. You can play co-op or against each other. The co-op is really fun and adds replay to the game. I guess you would call the replay average. It will take a while to unlock everything and it is pretty fun to play over. The replay is great if you have someone to play with you.

The graphics are great. Rather cartoony, but it wasn't supposed to look like games such as Gran Turismo 3. This is an arcade game, not a sim racer. The car designs and level designs all look great. Explosions look sweet. The sound is good. The only sound I really have a problem with is the guy that talks while you are playing. Sometimes when you do something, he will shout out a remark. Sometimes it is funny but it gets very annoying after the millionth time hearing it.

To buy or to rent you ask? Definitely buy this game if you are looking for a refreshing racing game.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/14/03, Updated 01/14/03