HSX HyperSonic.Xtreme

"Well worth the price - but only if you like level editors"

Summary:
HSX is a futuristic racing game that was released as a budget title. It looks fairly bad on the surface, but an incredibly deep track editor makes this a game worth the price and more.

Graphics:
The graphics in this game are not particularly good. The terrain usually consists of mountain shapes covered in a single texture. The buildings are all the same color brick with windows. Buildings pop in and out of the visible distance, and the car models are uninspired. Also, the game has some graphical effects that are downright annoying, such as rain and a very distracting smoke effect when your car suffers damage. Still, the game moves very fast, gives you a great sense of speed, and almost never experiences any slowdown.
Rating: D+

Music:
The music is serviceable. The stage music is a mixture of futuristic sounding rock and techno, and it fits the game well. None of the tracks are particularly annoying, but none are very memorable as well. There is no music in the track editor, which is where I spend most of my time. That's probably a good thing, as I'm sure I would've started to hate it by now.
Rating: C

Sound:
Upon first playing, you might wonder if there are even sound effects in this game? They are there, but are quiet and subdued. You get the occasional power-up collection sound, a sound to let you know you hit a wall or used a boost, perhaps a gentle whirring of the engines, but that's about it. On the plus side, there's no annoying announcer that you wish you could mute. On the negative side, there's virtually no sound at all.
Rating: C-

Story:
There is pretty much no story to speak of in this game. You are in the future racing a fast, hovering car. Of course, not too many racing games have plots, and those that do usually have plots that leave a lot to be desired. Still, it would've been nice to have a little back-story for each of the characters or at the very least an awards ceremony when you beat a cup.
Rating: D+

Controls:
Some people have complained about the controls in this game, but I think they do the job quite nicely. All you really need to learn is how to use the sharp turn using the shoulder buttons, how to control the height and distance of your jump, and when to boost versus when to break. All of the controls are intuitive and fairly responsive. There are no options to customize the controls, but frankly that option isn't needed because the default is just fine.
Rating: B

Depth / Scope:
This game does not pretend to be anything it isn't: a futuristic racing game packaged into a budget title. It doesn't try to do too much, such as add in a lot of mini games or extra modes. It has the basic modes of single player and multi-player. Single player is fairly fun, but you'll mostly want to play through it to unlock the track editor (more on that later). Multi-player is a different story. You can only play with a second person, and the game becomes almost unplayable. For some reason, they decided to lay out the screen so that each player gets a vertical half of the screen, with player one on the left and player two on the right. This is in contrast to most other racing games, which have a horizontal lay out (player one on top). This makes it very difficult to judge the twists and turns in the track, and you can't change it.
The other mode of play in the game is the track editor. This is what makes this game great. When I originally picked up this game, I wasn't expecting very much from the track editor. However, once you have unlocked all of the features, you will come to find that this is one of the most deep and powerful level editors ever put in a console game. You have the ability to make almost anything you can imagine and can easily make tracks that far surpass the quality of the tracks included with the game. The range and breadth of things you can do is, frankly, mind-boggling. You can spend hours upon hours making tracks in this thing and never do the same thing twice. To put it bluntly, I was (and still am) shocked to find this included with this game. This feature alone makes up for the sub-par single and multi-player experiences.
Rating: A-

Overall Game Play:
Gamers who are looking for a challenging futuristic racer along the lines of the Wipeout and F-Zero games should look elsewhere. However, if you are at all into level design and track editors, you have to get this game immediately. This is reinforced by the fact that it is a budget title, and usually retails for around $10. Once you get the hang of what does and doesn't work well within the confines of the game, you can exploit this to create tracks that are incredibly fun. A game that, at first glance, is very poorly made and somewhat incomplete, becomes a thrilling experience beyond compare. I really can't describe how much fun it is to create your own tracks and then share them with friends. The variety of tracks you can create (and virtually infinite locations to create them in) almost makes this game worth a full $50.
Rating: A-

Replay:
With HSX, replay-ability has become almost infinite for me. I still come back to this game every now and then, years after I bought it, and sit down and make a new track or two. As long as you have creative juices flowing through your veins, HSX is a great outlet for them. I have logged more hours into this game then almost any other game I've ever played.
Rating: A+

Tilt:
The single player game itself is certainly not original or, to be more blunt, fun. The multi-player is a huge debacle, the graphics and sound are lacking, and the game itself just feels incomplete. Still, the level editor is so amazing, that this game became very hard for me to put down.
Rating: 16 / 16

Score Calculation:
Each letter grade is translated into a point value. F gets a 0, D- gets a 1, up to A+, which gets a 12. These are totaled with the Tilt value to get a total score out of 100. The total is then divided by 10 and rounded to the nearest value (5 rounds up).

Total score: 3+5+4+3+8+10+10+12+16 = 71 / 100 = 7 / 10.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 03/30/05