Wreckless: The Yakuza Missions

"Another Xbox letdown"

Wreckless: The Yakuza Missions looked awesome in all the previews; it had amazing graphics, moved really quickly, and incredible detail. Unfortunately, underneath even the unpolished graphical finish, there lies more problems for this ill-fated game.

First, the graphics. The cities are really quite beautiful, buildings stretch into the sky, surfaces have accurate, bump-mapped textures, and there is a plethora of detail, right down to belts and fans whirring around under the hood of your car (seen when said hood gets ripped off). The damage modeling, while quite realistic looking, has some problems in area detection- mainly, when you roll over your car on a concrete road, most times you will right yourself without even a scratch on the roof. Yet its the lighting that steals the show here. Glass reflects a sunset in the most eye-catching way, and intricate relfections play across all other polished surfaces. Shadows, to the Xbox standard so far, a quite blocky and can get distorted, but when travelling quickly, are hardly noticeable. There's a lot to crash into here as well, with very little framerate fuctuations. The main counter to the graphics is the pop-up, and there is a significant amount of it. Entire 2D backgrounds will appear out of nowhere, as will hoardes of pedestrians. Cars draw in sometimes not 10m in front of your windshield. Other than that, a fairly solid graphical effort.
Score: 7/10

For the sound, even more of a disappointing surprise. The soundtrack is very uninspired, and would benefit from some more liscensed tunes. The noise, for the most part, is merely adequate, yet engine noises are pathetic, even in the most monster of cars (one has two freaking jet engines on the back of it, yet sounds like a slidewhistle).
Score: 4/10

In terms of gameplay, Wreckless also falls flat on its face. The missions are repetitive and boring, and lack the requirement of any talent or skill. You find yourself playing through the level once to find where all the objectives are, and then restarting and just blasting from point to point. There's little challenge in the missions beyond knowing where everything is. Enemy car AI doesnt do anything spectacular, it basically just drives and keeps going after its target. The physics engine is somewhat sketchy, and there are many instances where you can get stuck on terrain, but still be upright, and therefore not being bailed after a few teetering seconds...leaving you to sit there until you restart the mission. The 2 mission paths are somewhat varied, and will offer 3-5 hours of gameplay at best. The characters are fairly bubbly and dumb, the cops in the cities dont care what you do (you can hit them head on and they just keep on driving), and your car spins out more than you'd like to. Pedestrians cannot be struck, and non-essential cars blink out of existence after being hit.
Score: 2/10

Control-wise, there isnt much to complain about. Its not hard to get the hang of, but lacks any refinement for those that really want to drive like a maniac. Basically, if offers an accelerator, a handbrake, and a reverse. No real brakes to stop you aside from hitting the handbrake and flipping around in a 180 turn makes for some frustrating corners, but otherwise, its all fairly good.
Score: 7/10

There's not much here in replay value either. The video replays at the end of your missions are neat, bearing a Gran-Turismo sort of cinematic style. There isnt much (if anything) to unlock, and leaves you merely to play through missions and time trials to up your time on the missions.
Score: 3/10

Overall, though its definitely worth renting purely for the visuals, Wreckless lacks the polish or refined touches to warrant a purchase. See it for the lighting, then move on.

Overall Score: 5/10

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 02/08/02, Updated 02/08/02