PixelJunk Racers

"Pixel Junk Racers- PS3 Review"

Like Scalectric? Always wished that you could play it without having to remove all of the furniture from your living room first? Pixel Junk Racers sounds like just the game for you.

Racers is a 2D top down racer which is set across ten increasingly crazy, twisting courses. It is not, however, your standard racing game. There is very little of the “first to the finish and you win” type of gaming and instead you a presented with a variety of novelty challenges to complete in order to win a medal. These range from the fairly sensible catch and over take the opposition car to the totally random inflate your car without popping it and see how far it will fly. In total there are thirty two races which can be unlocked and to do this you must progress through the Tournament mode first.

Tournament mode places you into increasingly tougher combinations of three tracks and you must get a medal place in each to progress. Initially successful completion of the three races is sufficient to unlock the next set; however, later on you will be expected to achieve three gold medals in order to move on. In many cases this is ridiculously difficult and to be honest I gave up before I managed to unlock the final tier. Once you manage to complete a track in Tournament mode it is unlocked in Single race and Score attack modes. Single race is fairly obvious and needs no explanation whereas Score attack is a little more interesting. In Score attack mode you take your skills (or lack of in my case) on line and every time you complete a race your results are posted on the online score boards. You cannot race opponents on line, however, so multi player is purely a standard affair.

For a game which relies on the use of only three controls (accelerate, left and right) this game is extraordinarily frustrating. In many cases the track is so full and you are travelling so fast that there is no option but to crash. You horn (oh yes, I forgot about that – so four controls) is ignored totally by the bunch of cars blocking the track in front of you and if they are not in your way already then they will damn sure move lanes just as you approach. This wouldn't be so bad but I am talking about a bunch of maybe a dozen cars here all crawling along at 5mph, not one or two travelling just slightly slower than you. You can avoid the crash, I guess, but this means matching their speed and waiting until one of them randomly decides to move lane and let you through. To be honest you will more than likely find your self trying to ram a route through and each race will soon deteriorate into a cycle of crash, accelerate, crash, swear, smash your PS3 and go get some therapy of some sort.

You might have gathered by now that I am not hugely satisfied with my PSN purchase of Racers. You would of course be quite correct and I have yet again found myself a victim of the PSNs only flaw – the lack of demos. I appreciate that these games are cheap and all but every week it seems a case of lucky dip. I guess I could wait and see what other people have to say about a game but the spending urge is just too great. Invariably people's opinions are also polarised. I have seen a number of posts by people who love this game for example, probably as many as there are from people who hate it like me. Anyway, I don't want this review to turn into a PSN rant as there are some gems on there as well and the return of pocket money priced games is a great thing even if some of some of the games are not.

Graphically Racers is attractive enough with everything looking very smooth even at your ridiculous top speed. I have read some criticism that this might not be the case on non-HD televisions so if you have one of those it might be worth trying out a friends copy if you can. The music and speech aren't bad either but the sound effects are truly aggravating. The noise made when you hit another car (and you will, oh yes, you will) soon becomes intolerable. Imagine crashing into a pack of a dozen cars and then someone doing the fingernails on the blackboard/polystyrene on the window trick just to rub it in. Wrong, just wrong. As for longevity, well there are loads of options available and despite my dislike for the game I cannot criticise the variety of race types. It is also challenging so if you do like it then it will keep you busy for a long time.

After all that you are no doubt expecting me to give this game a score of 1 across the board. Don't get me wrong, the game does what it set out to do and there are no apparent faults in the graphics or sound. I just don't like it. I will be reserving the lowest of the low scores for games which are so full of faults that they should never have made it past the testing phase.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 04/07/08

Game Release: PixelJunk Racers (EU, 10/25/07)