GripShift

"Strange...there's no shifting of grip in this game."

These days, racing and driving games are quite serious. With the exception of games like Mario Kart DS and such, the atmosphere in said games is often realistic. The cars are often licensed from real world car manufacturers. Like the cars, the music is also licensed. GripShift, of course, differs from them. Well, on two of the counts anyway.

GripShift is not your average driving game. Heck, it doesn't even pretend to be one. Instead of racing around a track, trying to beat your opponents to the finish, the goal is to simply make it from point A to point B in a set amount of time. If you go fast enough, you'll get a medal (and some credits, which are used to unlock new courses, cars, drivers, decals, and mini-games.). Of course, the order of medals is bronze, silver, and gold (in ascending order) In this way, it bears a remarkable similarity to a little-known PC game called TrackMania.

What makes it similar? In TrackMania, the point wasn't to beat your opponents to the goal so much as it was to make it from start to finish quick enough to get a medal. Sometimes even getting to the finish was enough of a challenge, just like it is in GripShift. Yet while TrackMania failed by having next to no personality, GripShift succeeds.

If you've already got the medals for a course, there's also other things you can do on the courses. There are stars scattered around on the courses, and you can pick them all up to get more credits. This can really help if you need just a few more credits to unlock something else. There are also the GS emblems on the track, but good luck getting to them- they're often hidden well off the course.

If I said that GripShift has pluck, I would be understating it. The game just oozes with individuality, from the selectable drivers to the tracks. From surfer-dude Bud to punk-rock chick Stacey to street-smart Tommy Battle, you can't argue that the drivers aren't your everyday bunch. The tracks range from the somewhat normal Camberquick Green to the tracks like Elephant of Surprise that elicit a WTF?! kind of response. For the latter example, there are elephants placed on the track at strategic points...like near checkpoints or teleports. Okay, now that's really screwed up.

The music is also very good. For whatever reason, though, the developers chose to license music. This is the one point that GripShift shares with most driving games today. The soundtrack is mostly rap/techno/dance music, which might turn some people off. I like that kind of stuff, though, so it's right up my alley.

Also, while there are very few of these in the game, you've got the race courses, where the objective is to beat your opponents around the course. It's great fun if you're looking for a little traditional racing action in all the...um...untraditional driving action. It's not a major part of the game, though.

GripShift also has an excellent game engine. You press X to accelerate, square to brake, circle to use an item if you have one (only on the race courses), triangle to change the camera angle, the L button to handbrake (useful for sharp turns), and the R button to use your nitrous. The control is very tight and responsive- when you hold right, your car will turn to the right with no lag. When you turn left, it'll turn left without any lag. If you ramp off something and get some air, you have a great degree of control over your airborne vehicle. You can accelerate, use nitrous, steer, and even brake in the air. This is useful for getting lower times on the tracks, and in turn getting medals.

There's even a track editor in the game, where you can build your own tracks. You can build either a challenge course or a race course. It's up to you, but whatever you build, you have to keep it under your allowance of 1000 points. Each piece takes up very few points, however, so it's not too big of a deal. You can even share your tracks with your friends. Unfortunately, you can't share them over the internet.

Now that I've told you about all the great stuff GripShift has, I've got to tell you about the stuff that isn't so good about the game. This won't take long, as there are not very many negative points about the game.

The first bad point about the game is that the mini-games you get are often very boring. While they are suitably wacky for a game of this caliber, they are at best only slight diversions for when you get bored. My personal favorite is the Penguin Bowling game, where you run over penguins with your car....

Second, there are only six cars to choose from, and while they're decent and all that, we probably could have done with a few more cars to pick from. Also, the drivers have no special attributes which makes one worth choosing over another. So it makes choosing a driver more of a personal preference thing.

Third, since the tracks are very high off the ground, there's not much room for error. You've got to control your car well or else you're going to be falling off the track. A lot.

GripShift is hardly a deeply flawed game, as you can see. I'd say it's currently one of the better games on the PSP. If you're into driving games, or you just want something different, then you'd do well to spend the US$20 to pick this game up. I highly reccomend it.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 08/09/06