"A good but flawed racing title"

Welcome to my review of speed kings for the gamecube. Before i begin, i want to compare this game to another game called Burnout. Speed kings is more like burnout then burnout 2. It's a good concept, but it fell short before i reached the finish line.

GRAPHICS:

The graphics are great in this game. Clean textures, good water effects, and a spanking graphic engine (the burnout engine) creates the graphics. The tracks are all set in different themes. There is a arizona track (called ''Casino Run'' no less ^_^) and even a race through the streets of Detroit! All the tracks are very detailed and look amazing. This is BY FAR the best part of the game.

CONTROL:

Control is ok in this game. They seem to be a bit twitchy for my taste though. All the tricks are easy to pull off because of the greatness of the gamecube controller. The default control scheme is ok, but i suggest changing it to your own scheme. And to the creators of this game... please put in more than 6 tricks and variations of those tricks in the game.

SOUND:

Here is where speed kings lacks in the most: sound. The music is very very bad in this game. In fact, the main menu music made me lower the volume ALL THE WAY DOWN. The crashes sound good, but the bikes sound... bleh. All in all, the sound package is poor.

GAMEPLAY:

Here is a summary of the gameplay: zoom, trick 1, crash, crash, zoom, trick 1, trick 2, crash. Not that it is bad, but it is very very repetitive. After doing the same trick over and over again, it gets boring. After another round on the same 18 tracks where the patterns are EXACTLY THE SAME, it gets very boring. This game begged for a crash mode or a traffic mode (no competitors, just you and your bike in a city with traffic, and no timer), but it just got a cheap tag multiplayer mode and a ''trick'' mode where guess what, you get to do the SAME 6 TRICKS OVER AND OVER AGAIN. All I have to say is ''repetition''.

OVERALL:

This game is a great rental. If you want to buy a game that has insane crashes, buy burnout 2. I hope speed kings 2 is to burnout 2 as speed kings 1 is to burnout 1: it just could have been better. That is the end of my review for speed kings!

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 07/18/03, Updated 07/18/03