Wreckless: The Yakuza Missions

"Decent graphics, decent gameplay, decent rental title."

The Wreckless story: Some developers decided that ramming your car into other cars was a good idea for a game. And thus, Yakuza was born.

Quick Review:
The Good:
-Decent graphics
-Cool cars that handle well
-Mindless arcade fun
The Bad:
-Horrible in-game engine makes for lots of problems.
-Lack of customizations- no soundtracks, only one control setup, no car customization, and only fours possible configurations for missions! (Low, High traffic; Normal, Hard difficulty).
-Difficult objectives mean it's better to play most missions several times "scouting out" the objectives before you can ever hope to complete them.
-There is next to zero story in the mission mode. Just skip the cutscenes and go.

The rest:
Graphics- 6/10
NOT the best thing ever. People have long lauded this as an absolute graphical masterpiece for the Xbox... I disagree heavily. Clipping problems abound, and even in the ingame cutscenes you'll catch cars going straight through solid objects and random items disappearing for no reason. Car models are good, but I can name a dozen games that look a lot better with a lot less problems- many of them released years before. Environments are also... good. It's hard to see why there was so much praise for the graphics here.

Control- 4/10
The cars in the game actually handle pretty well. Most models turn well, and acceleration is decent for all cars I've played- there's now "slow as a snail" vehicle per se- which is excellent. The problem is that the game engine is terrible. Reversing in any car is slow and awkward, and required all too frequently as spotty collision modeling forces your car into awkward places. More than once I've found myself upside-down being shoved along the road and unable to fend for myself, waiting for an invisible piece of code to finally figure out I can't move and magically respawn my car somewhere I don't want to be. It turns what would otherwise be remarkable vehicle handling into a glitchy experience at best.

Gameplay- 4/10
Find car, hit car. Hit car. Hit car. Explosion.
Wash, rinse, repeat. Then, randomly...
YOU HAVE 20 SECONDS TO MAKE YOUR WAY THROUGH TWISTING ROADS EXPLODING BARRELS AND EIGHT DOZEN CARS THAT CAN PUSH YOU OFF THE ROAD INSTANTLY NOT TO MENTION THE OBJECTIVE IS NOT MARKED ON YOUR MAP! GO!
A dozen times I've been replaying a hard part of a level and I finally complete that part, thinking everything is fine, then one of those mad dashes happens and you lose everything because of a million faults- all the developer's. This could have been a really good game if not for the sudden and glaring problems like these.

Replay Value- 3/10
Once all the cars are unlocked, there's nothing to keep you around. Since ALL the missions have a strict time limit, there's no chance at all to just explore the environments or have your own fun. A pity too, as an "exploration" mode would have made all the difference here.

Overall- 4/10
You can see the bright spots here and there. Car combat- Awesome! Origional vehicles- Great! Watching your car lay upside-down for thirty seconds as a dozen cars slowly push you against a wall and your timer runs out... not so good. Wreckless would make a good, cheap rental. After that, there's really nothing to keep you around.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 06/07/04