First up is the wannabe Star Fox imitator “Redout: Space Assault” (henceforth referred to as “AS”) which in spite of the name has nothing to do with the quasi-popular high speed racing game Redout, aside from one or two shared sound effects. Now Redout was widely seen as a spiritual successor to Wipeout on it’s release and while it did have some differences, that inspiration was pretty nakedly and unabashedly worn on it’s sleeve. Space Assault is a similar attempt to piggy-back off a formerly popular but now dormant IP, and unfortunately it completely and utterly sucks. The first of AS’s myriad issues is that it’s a mobile phone game port (yay!) which is not disclosed anywhere on it’s Steam page with the exception of the mixed review section. Now I was willing to let this one slide, against my better judgement, as I thought that a Star Fox clone didn’t really need many controls as the whole point is that it’s an on-rails shooter. So all you’d really need is the ability to shoot and do a modicum of movement across the screen, which theoretically a smartphone could handle. Alas the game handles poorly and has a weird feel to it that I can’t quite put into words, but essentially you always feel a little sluggish and the enemy projectiles have the same issue. This means dodging them can be weirdly annoying, an issue that really makes the game a pain in the butt. To make sure it wasn’t just a SKILL ISSUE I went and played the original Star Fox on SNES, only to discover that I didn’t have that issue at all and so it was just AS living up to it’s moniker.

But(t) of course just having weird controls and a suspect pedigree wouldn’t be enough for me to totally drop the game, as I’ve beaten around 600ish releases and honestly a lot of them had some issues. What makes AS so wretched is just the lack of any redeeming features. The story is cliché and bear in mind, this is cliché within the context of videogame writing. It is so, so, aggressively bland and utterly fails to provide even the flimsiest reason for the player to engage with it or care about any of the characters. These characters also don’t do themselves any favours because their dialogue is below “Direct-to-DVD sequel” levels and it feels like every line of dialogue was cranked out by a bored intern on a single, lazy afternoon. The voice actors meanwhile appear to be totally aware that the plot, writing and characters are all a big pool of wank because they put zero effort into their roles. In space no one can hear you scream, so why bother having any dialogue with emotion, wit, charm or warmth? I can only assume they had random members of staff perform these lines because honestly everyone has the same accents (despite ostensibly being a diverse international group) and no one can act. As for the rest of the sounds, you’ve got standard PEWPEW space laser noises. Alongside a totally forgettable OST with some occasional attempts to insert PUMPIN electronic music during the action sequences. Last but not least, you’ve got a missile lock-on noise so enjoy a slightly tinny beep beep beep every time an enemy shoots a missile at you – which they do quite frequently!

And you’ll need to frequently avoid those enemy missiles with a half-hearted barrel roll feature as you have a Hull strength life bar and a regenerating Shield. So far, so Sci-Fi. But for some reason a bunch of random attacks just ignore the shield, to the point that in the early game it’s pretty much 50/50 as to whether you can regenerate any damage or not. Fortunately the developers have included absolutely 0 penalty for dying (I guess it’s a phone game so they know the controls are garbage?) …Well that’s not entirely true, as you lose the money you’ve accumulated thus far in that mission when you are instantly respawned exactly where you died. Although as the money can only be used for really, really lousy upgrades that barely make a difference (e.g. you need to buy the missile upgrade ten times to go from shooting 3 missiles per salvo to 4) AND you get most of your money from objectives and upgrade cards (you can equip one of these at a time, and they do really exciting things like increase your shield bar by 6%) it’s a very light-touch punishment. Speaking of the missile upgrades, you have two main ways of attacking the baddies; your normal laser weapon which can be swapped during the game for a variety of equally useless types and missiles which are much better because they do more damage and auto-lock on. You have infinite ammo for both, but the enemy health bars have been deliberately designed so that you’ll need to constantly spam both weapons to clear through everything in good time. This wouldn’t be an issue, but some missions just abruptly end after around 3 minutes if you didn’t shoot enough of the bad guys down. But don’t worry, as the missions are very bland anyway and you’ll probably not even notice that you’re replaying them as they’re basically all premised around doing the same thing against the same enemies (seriously the Act 1 boss and the Act 2 boss are the same). To it’s credit the game does have some “free flight” missions where it dumps you in space surrounded by the same props that it uses in every other mission, but this time you need to find the enemies as they won’t come to you! This would be more interesting if your space ship didn’t feel really slow and, there was like, stuff going on but alas these missions blow chunks too. Oh and once you beat all the 48-ish missions the game comes with, that’s it as there are no other gameplay modes. Probably for the best to be honest.

Second up on the naughty step is a game that broke my big fat clogged heart, as it just has such a great concept. Big Mutha Truckers 2 (henceforth referred to as BMT2) is an attempt to marry Crazy Taxi with a big dumb parody of truckin’ across all 48 continental US states. Unfortunately this parody is really, really dull and is very predictable with every character falling short of the “amusing but played out” archetypes they’re aiming for and instead feel like a very uncreative pre-teen designed them. But it’s a quasi-budget release, so it doesn’t matter if it’s dumb and unoriginal so long as it’s a dumb kind of fun. After all, no one was that bothered when the Simpson’s made their own crazy taxi rip-off even though it had extremely familiar characters and very little original gameplay ideas. Unfortunately BMT2 is just… bad when it comes to the actual moment to moment gameplay and it feels like it was really, desperately hoping it would be carried by it’s tongue in cheek characters and world. Alas this doesn’t pan out, as neither the gameplay nor the writing is above D-tier and so you have two shoddily put together halves colliding to form a weak whole. There’s really not much to be said about the writing, other than the fact that every character is summed up in their entirety the first time you meet them and after a few encounters you’re just bored of them. You’ve got the Hollywood airhead, the douchebag celebrity, an Area 51 inspired alphabet agency spook, a couple of hill-billies, a generic greedy millionaire businessman and a corrupt Russian who spends the game on his big ass yacht. You go between these KOOKY, ZANY, THIGH-SLAPPING characters to earn cash by moving items that one of them will sell you on the cheap, to another character who is willing to pay more. Ostensibly there’s some strategy to this, but… there really isn’t. Just buy the cheapest items and Keep On Truckin’ til you make a profit while trying not to let the stale, repeated character quips get you down.

And trust me, I don’t enjoy writing this as the game has a sort-of heart to it. You can tell the developers wanted to make an amusing game, but much like with Cel Damage the humour is simultaneously going to go over the heads of the well-behaved kids and yet isn’t funny enough for the grown ups. It’s just stuck that awkward spot, much like a stand-up comedian who’s bombing because their material just isn’t that good. You don’t hate it, but you do wish it would end if only to save everyone’s sanity. As for the gameplay, as mentioned above it’s pretty basic and while you can use the money to buy upgrades they don’t really make that much of a difference, because pretty the whole game is split between two activities. The first is driving from character to character to make that sweet, sweet money. The second is compromised of missions, which also involve driving from place to place but have a bit more effort put into them even if they’re still pretty bland. The big issue here is just that the driving mechanics aren’t very well implemented, so you have a game that’s almost entirely based on driving and the driving isn’t very good. Sure there are some moderately entertaining environmental hazards (and the cops) to watch out for, like UFOs stealing your cargo, but these are little sprinklings of inspiration that are trying to distract you from the fact that the core gameplay mechanics are bad and that the game just isn’t funny. Unlike Redout Space Assault this game does have plenty of content, but most of it’s locked behind delivering enough cargo to store up money so you can the next mission which plays the same as the grinding so that you can then grind so more to unlock the next mission and so and so forth. There are one or two features that are actually OK, such as the ability to set a time limit between destinations with lower limits providing a larger delivery bonus (which encourages and rewards skill) and a variety of radio stations ala GTA including a talk show with a decent amount of content. It’s just that none of it is good and there’s a reason that this franchise died on it’s ass with mediocre reviews. If you played this game as a kid, hang onto those memories and do not bother revisiting BMT2. Especially as the current Steam port is so busted that even basic Steam features like the overlay and screenshots don’t work.

Last but not least in our trinity of tedium, we have Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop which is the sequel of sorts to Alien Swarm the throwaway Valve project that was most notable for letting the player receive a free TF2 hat. Unlike either of the two preceding games, I didn’t pay anything for this one but instead came across it while searching for a free game that I could play with a friend on his lousy laptop. As such you might argue that it doesn’t deserve it’s place on this list, as it’s literally free and to my knowledge doesn’t even have a monetisation system due to the fact that it’s a labour of love from a dedicated modding community. Yet in spite of the potential for a cute little underdog story, I’m including it here for the simple reason that neither me nor my friend enjoyed it. In fact the more we played, the more frustrated we became as while the game has some good ideas it’s also riddled with questionable design choices that got on our collective tits. Due to it’s price I promise not to be as mean to it, but still why the fuck does the infestation system require you to place a medkit down and then wait for some god damn long? Who thinks this is fun? Who thought “oh my goodness we’ve made the game BETTER take THAT Greg Coomer”??? There’s a ton of content in this game, but also a lot of WHY’s that remain on our minds after playing through the first campaign and mutually agreeing that we are not going to bother with the rest because fuck that noise.

But I’ve gotten ahead of myself, because many of you are probably asking “what the hell even is Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop?” Well I’m glad you asked dear reader, as it’s a top-down shooter that allows up to 4 player co-op in which your team is split between around 8 characters and 4 classes. Each class has two characters who are slightly different in terms of their stats, but these stats don’t seem to matter that much anyway so I think this is more for the advanced players to care about. As me and my buddy were casuals only playing the game because we were running out of options, we just went with a medic (because otherwise you are guaranteed to die) and a Tech Marine because they’re mandatory for most of the missions. Once you’ve chosen a character you get a surprisingly extensive unlock system, where you pick 1 weapon, 1 weapon or utility item and then one equippable item. There’s a variety of guns, but also some more interesting tools like a deployable sentry turret, a medkit that heals the squad, an ammo pack for the squad and a bunch of other things that aren’t weapons per see but are useful tools for the entire squad. Then there’s that utility item which is generally a bit mediocre, such as the ability to weld the occasional door, take a bit less damage (not that matters much), lay down mines, take a personal medkit for emergency heals and so on. Once you’ve picked your squad and your gear, you’re then able to play through any of the game’s approximately eleven multi-mission campaigns. These missions might have sections where you need to use a certain item to clear the path, such as big rocks that need to be destroyed with a mining laser or hive-growth that needs to be destroyed with a flamethrower (or a mining laser). Unfortunately the game doesn’t tell you if this is going to be the case, but in our experience the map-makers are generous enough to provide those items when they are needed to prevent you from being totally stuck. Now as for all these shiny new weapons, they’re generally pretty varied but they all have not that much ammo which is a problem in a game where you are shooting things a lot. Missions do tend to give you some more ammo every now and then, but generally speaking you need to be careful with your shots (especially as friendly fire is enabled) and even your reloads as reloading a magazine throws any remaining ammunition away. Plus reloading can take a surprisingly long time for a game in which even the basic enemies can knock you around like a pinata, which is somewhat negated by the introduction of the active reload system that’s also used in Gears of War.

So the game itself is free, it has a lot of content, why is it in the did-not-finish triad? Well aside from the counter-productive nature of the game having eleven freaking campaigns which feels a tad excessive frankly the biggest issue is just that most of the enemies are annoying to deal with. You’ve got the standard grunts who can almost stun lock you, as their attacks knock you back a little bit and can mess you up more than they otherwise would. Then you’ve got ranged enemies which love to hang out just off-screen while pelting you, big fat enemies that eat up a lot of ammo then explode, annoying little enemies that spawn into the game world with a little jump that makes them temporarily immune to gun fire and are too quick to melee. Plus there are flying enemies that are a fucking pest because they’re so small and fast, spawners that spawn in those little enemies with their stupid little jumps constantly and are a chore, especially as when they die spawn more. Wrapping up the selection of annoying enemies are levelled up ranged baddies that fling explosives at you and finally (from what we played anyway) a boss monster that is immune to damage from the front and takes a lot of bullets being fired into their ass to give up. Oh and of course I almost forget the small infectors who will take you from full health to fully dead (no respawning btw) in about 6 seconds unless your medic deploys the tiny medkit with it’s tiny healing radius next to you. An action that takes slightly more fumbling than you’d hope for, and if you’ve split up or they’re picking their nose it’s over for you. As a bonus if the medic dies, then everyone who isn’t a medic can’t take their medkit tool so after that it’s basically sudden death. Did I mention that the basic bitch enemies are almost constantly respawning? Because once you combine that with the skimpy amounts of ammo, the game does become a bit of an endurance test. Can you and your friends manage to get through an entire campaign without getting frustrated at the game? Great, then go do another 10! The scoreboards tell you if your friends bothered, and I can safely say that all of mine gave up around the end of the first campaign. Because this is a game with a lot of love put into it, by people with questionable test in videogames. It’s the quintessential problem with the fan project, namely that the fans are really into the base game and so they’ve made a game that’s only going to be of interest for people who really into the base game. Imagine if they made L4D3 but each player had a specific type of mini-game they’d occasionally have to do, and if any of your team died you got to eat a big mouthful of shit. That’s basically the Alien Swarm: Reactive drop experience. A great game for those who really want a 4 player co-op top-down shooter that requires coordination, but a bad game for those who don’t have 3 friends with those interests. The best I could do was one additional buddy, and he kept dying which meant that I slowly lost the will to live. After clearing out 3 of the boss enemies, avoiding infection, fighting through the whole map and then rushing our way back out, I died at the final hurdle because the extraction objective wanted to make things more exciting by taking even fucking longer than it usually did. Oh and did I mention my buddy kept dying because you can’t see shit in most of the areas of each map, as everything is made deliberately dark so that the game can have a spooky horror vibe. Either find 3 patient friends with plenty of co-op top-down shooter experience, or crank the brightness up and hope for the best. Either way, it’s an acquired taste much like that freakish Corsican cheese that’s filled with maggots and mould. You might have a great time and I wouldn’t think less of you for doing so, but we didn’t and that’s why we cut our losses.

And that’s the trio, each of which I’m proud to say are in different genres and from developers (or modders) of varying pedigree. Unlike the slightly meaty promise at the start, I didn’t end up HATING all of them and in fact consider Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop to be fairly impressive in it’s own right. As for the other two however, they can eat my big fat arse as they are fucking garbage and I am mad that people are inadvertently still paying real money for them. Of the three, I’d give Alien Swarm: RD a tentative chance of redemption as we all love modders really, but the other two should be avoided at all costs. Especially Redout: Space Assault as the developers really should know bloody better than to shit out such a woeful and half-assed game. If you disagree with my take on the worst Starfox clone I’ve ever had the misfortune to play, then get on your bike. At least Big Mutha Truckers 2 was trying (albeit failing) to be entertaining and to offer something a bit different. It had heart, if not only brains or intelligently designed gameplay. Redout: Space ASSault is the definition of a bland, boring, ambitionless, uncreative, tedious gaming experience. They couldn’t even be bothered to avoid repeating the boss fights. Fuck that game. I did hate it, and Big Mutha Truckers 2 was a Big Mutha Pile of Poo (don’t complain about this petty and childish insult, it’s exactly the level of dialogue and writing from that game) even if it’s not quite so reprehensible because intention matters. In conclusion, Redout: Space Assault is fucking woeful, Big Mutha Truckers 2 is a Mutha-Trucking disappointment and Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop is just a bit of a pain in the backside.

The post The Did Not Finish Triad (Part 1 of ??) appeared first on Big Boaby Gaming.

Quick Note: While the game is available on basically every platform (GoG, Nintendo Switch, PS4/PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series) the only platform with a physical copy available is the PS4 which had a limited run release.

Absolute Drift: Zen Edition (Absolute Drift: ZE) is a game that piqued my interest years ago due to it’s interesting art-style and solid presentation, but once which had been sitting in my GoG library for years. After finally getting around to playing it, I’m surprised I waited so long as it’s a stellar example of how to develop a short-but-sweet indie game without falling victim to bloat or an off-putting difficulty cliff. To be fair, the game’s handling engine can initially be a challenge to get to grips with, as in spite of the fairly generous tutorial and relatively simple initial challenges, the central drift mechanic can be difficult to pull off. This isn’t due to a convoluted control scheme, but is instead due to how easy it is to oversteer or understeer, especially as you need to be going at a decent speed for the drift system to even work. If you’re going slightly too slow then you’ll still feel like you’re drifting and produce tire smoke, but it doesn’t count as actually drifting. On the flip side, going slightly too fast will cause you to either spin-out or be unable to turn in time, which can cause a collision. Both of these consequences for poorly performed drifts are an issue as they interfere with the game’s scoring system, which is one of the main way it gauges performance within courses. The system itself is fairly simple, you gain points for drifting and a few other things (such as hitting destructible bonus boxes) and these tricks can be increased via a score multiplier. If you go too long without drifting, or crash into an obstacle then your multiplier is reset and all allocated points are instantly earned. The tracks are often short enough however that you’ll need to maintain a multiplier to hit the higher targets. Oh and it almost goes without saying but the game has a leaderboard feature, so you’ll want to aim for those high scores if you’re the competitive type. As such the basic act of drifting is one that you can kind of fumble in the early game, but as the courses get more complicated and the score requirements get higher, you’ll eventually need to have a good grip (ahahahhahaha geddit xD) of how it works.

Despite these challenges, you barely need to understand how the drifting system works to actually “beat” the game interestingly enough. This is because there are two largely separate progression systems in the game’s campaign (or “free roam” mode). The first and most obvious is a series of tracks, with around 4 or 5 per “world” that each have 5 goals in them. To fully beat the track you’ll need to complete all 5 objectives, although you don’t need to do all 5 objectives in the same run. This means that if you need to beat the track within 80 seconds and achieve a score multiplier of say… x15 then you can focus on beating the track quickly on one playthrough and then restart the course while aiming for the multiplier. As such each objective in the game is eminently achievable, although I’d be lying if I said that there weren’t some towards the late game that felt extremely difficult. Each world also has one midnight stage, which are more challenging courses that take place at night and involve running through a course once (as opposed to the normal stages which will either dump you in an area with a time limit, or have you race around a small course multiple times). These midnight stages are the highlight of Absolute Drift: ZE in my opinion, but to unlock them you’ll need to complete a certain amount of track objectives across the normal tracks in that world.

As mentioned above though, these tracks are actually optional for “beating” the game. In an unexpected twist, you instead merely need to complete a series of objectives across each world which are scattered around within the overworld sections. Once you’ve cleared all of these overworld objectives you’ve unlocked the next one, with this cycle repeating for 5 worlds. This means that you can finish the entire game without ever playing a course, if you were insane so inclined. These overworld objectives are fairly simple and can include clearing a jump, spinning around a piece of terrain or drifting between two pieces of scenery on the map. They’re visually obvious as they appear in a luscious red, before reverting back to the normal white colour once they’ve been completed. Each world has around 20ish of these mini-objectives scattered around, and they tend to be incredibly forgiving so long as you can find them (the worlds increase in size as the game proceeds, so I’ll confess to “losing” one in both world 4 and 5). What makes them forgiving is the fact that if you need to clear a jump, then you can attempt it as many times as you like for example, or if the objective is to spin around an object doing donuts then you can spin-out and then start again without any progress being lost. As a consequence beating these objectives is basically just a matter of time (and finding them) so there isn’t much challenge to be found if you were to only do the bare minimum needed to “win”. Instead the real meat of this game is found in it’s stages and in particular the objectives contained within them. As such I’d really recommend playing through the stages, even if they are treated as an optional objective for some reason.

And that’s about it as far as the gameplay goes, while there are some further tricks that can be pulled off such as spin-boxes which require you to spin multiple times within them or donuts that require you to drift around them, the game really is just about drifting and those overworld objectives. Fortunately the game not only has a charmingly simple visual style (as illustrated by the screenshots in this review) but also has a great accompanying soundtrack which manages to be laid back but energetic. This soundtrack is provided by the artists C41 and Nyte and does a great job of complimenting the tone of the game, which has some subtle nods to that whole mid-2010’s vapourwave nonsense without going too far. Instead the game has a clean, crisp visual style that holds up well in spite of the relatively low amount of assets and quality, while the soundtrack is distinctive without being obnoxious (no badly warbled J-POP samples and lazy repetitive beats here). As mentioned the game does have a modicum of longevity thanks to it’s leaderboards feature, although I must confess that as of 2023 the GoG version’s boards no longer seem to be working – which also removes the ghost functionality. This ghost functionality would just show the route that your previous high-score, friend’s high-score or even the global high-score took through a stage, but alas it has gone the way of the dodo (at least for those buying it on GoG). There is also a sliver of customisation for your car, with a handful of different models and some different colours/decals that can be applied to them. This functionality is admittedly fairly basic however, so it’s more of a cute bonus than anything to strive for. Plus no one will be able to see it aside from you, as outside of ghosts (which may or may not work on other platforms) this is an entirely single player game.

In summary then Absolute Drift: ZE is a charming little game with a decent difficulty curve rooted around it’s central mechanic, that also provides a solid amount of content for those aiming for 100% completion. Those not seeking any stress are free to skip difficult track objectives, or even entire courses in their quest to reach the next world giving it an entirely optional amount of difficulty. Yet I remain adamant that you would only be cheating yourself by skipping most of the courses. Fortunately retrying objectives isn’t very frustrating thanks to the accompanying soundtrack, while the visual style gives the overworld linking everything together a stylish look. Ultimately I personally thought that Absolute Drift: ZE was worth the modest asking price and the time I spent on it (just over 6 hours) and so wouldn’t have much trouble recommending it to most players. Just be aware that this is a game that is all about learning one mechanic, so if you aren’t keen on practising a single thing repeatedly and would instead prefer a varied experience then this probably isn’t the game for you. Absolute Drift: ZE is a game that rewards commitment and expects players to gradually learn how to drift, so casual players will probably rush through it or (as the abysmally low completion rates on GoG attest – less than 4% of players beat the game) end up dropping it entirely.

The post Absolute Drift: Zen Edition appeared first on Big Boaby Gaming.

Nail’d is a 7th generation racing game brought into the world by Techland (of Call of Juarez and Dead Island fame), which came to my attention due to a combination of three significant factors. The first was that it was aggressively cheap with a sale price of around $1, the second was that it promised an earnestly unironic and heartfelt attempt to deliver a relentlessly energic racing game based around EXTREME off-roading action, and the third factor was that it somehow maintained a very positive average review rating on Steam. It’s definitely an obscure choice for a review considering the fact that it came and went without leaving much of an impact or fanbase behind, but I’m a sucker for bargain bin games from this era and honestly the fact that they managed to persuade Slipknot to put their music in the OST spoke volumes. Sadly they were only able to get 1 Slipknot song and one Rage Against the Machine Song, which I feel is honestly emblematic of how the entire game panned out. You see, the game itself is enjoyable but it definitely feels as though development time (or budget) ran out midway through the project and as such Techland panicked and desperately tried to pad out the game so that they could punt it onto the market as a fully priced AAA game.

Now that’s not to say that Nail’d doesn’t have it’s areas of refinement and effort, as the tracks you race on are generally pretty good and both the racing AI and soundtrack are par for the course with some nice touches. The tracks themselves fit into 3 broad clusters, each with equal-ish amounts of courses and they include off-road American desert tracks, off-road Andes mountains/woodland forest tracks and finally Mediterranean Grecian ruin tracks. Each group has it’s own biome and lighting and each track has it’s own hazards and moving parts, generally designed to make traversing them chaotic and to provide racers with ways to bash into each other and force their opponents to crash. The game also places a surprisingly large emphasis on aerial jumps, with most courses being absolutely ridden with ramps, jumps and hair-raising falls. To it’s credit, these jumps are often spectacular and are often just the right amount of challenging, requiring a bit of knowledge or skill to traverse successfully lest you smash into the side of a cliff or spend far too long airborne while your competition speeds off into the sunset. To keep these tracks and the ensuing races interesting, Nail’d also provides you with a Nitros boost ability which passively regenerates and which can also be increased quickly via performing one of a series of “Feats”. These include performing wheelies, causing other players to crash, nailing a perfect landing or driving through flaming circles / checkpoints. While these may sound like a silly little side activity, most of the tracks are built with them in mind and learning how to master them will give you a significant edge thanks to the nitros boost that they provide.

As for the AI, it’s often in the goldilocks spot of providing an acceptable challenge without being too perfect and has a surprising habit of making mistakes while the player isn’t looking. For most racing games you’re safe to assume that the AI is frankly cheating when they’re off screen, as they’re often immune to course hazards at best or actively gaining speed boosts via the tedious “rubber banding” effect at worst. Yet in Nail’d the AI can and will make an absolute mess of things while they’re far in the lead or eating your dust in the rear-view mirror, which gives the races and especially the tournament cups a much needed dose of unpredictability. Opponents that were placed 1st in the last race will suddenly drop down to 6th without any input from the player, or vice-versa which prevents the feeling that a cup has already been decided only a race or two in. There are one or two quirks to the AI though, such as the fact that it definitely has a pre-determined racing line (which is common to the genre) that it will follow even when it’s a really, really bad idea. You can also cause it to commit suicide at multiple points, as the AI will boost when you’re boosting near it but there are some jumps that it just doesn’t know how to handle while boosting and as such you can force it to over commit 100% of the time. Finally as for the soundtrack, it adds an air of cheesy metal rock which is era appropriate and that features some original pieces which serve to fill in the gaps between the bands that you might have heard of. While you’re not going to rush out and buy the Nail’d OST, the tracks all fit the game well and help push the game’s overall atmosphere of unabashed high-octane thrill seeking with an edge of the EXTREME

Alas this EXTREME feeling is hard to sustain in any game, and as mentioned above Nail’d has the definite air of a game that ran out of something during it’s development. While the OST is great (at least within the context of the game), it is relatively skimpy and will loop frequently even before you’ve raced all of the tracks that the game has to offer. And even though those tracks are almost all good (one or two feel like they were designed by malicious designers who want to see you crash and revel in your frustration) there just aren’t enough of them to sustain the game. For context the campaign is split into a series of events, starting with a tutorial and then gently easing you into a series of “tournaments” that each feature multiple events that correspond to a race or maybe two that have the same rules. This section of Nail’d is great fun as you’re constantly encountering new tracks and learning their tricks, but then it abruptly ends around the 3 hour mark and you’re then asked to complete multiple of the aforementioned courses per event with multiple events per cup. If you’re like me you’ll initially assume this is a heightening of the stakes and a way to introduce the cup mechanic, wherein winning one race isn’t enough and now you need to prove your mettle against the same racers in multiple races at a time.

Alas the majority of the game takes this format, as you’ll have done every course before you’re even halfway through and then burned through the “mutators” in no time. These mutators are ways in which the game influences the courses so as to spice things up and introduce new goals, but there aren’t many of them and most of them are fairly rudimentary. You’ve got “no collision” mode, which disables collisions with other drivers, a max boost mode which means your nitros boost is always full, a “stunt” mode wherein the “feats” mentioned earlier add to your score with the highest score winning and finally a time attack mode where a timer is ticking down and you need to race through the checkpoints in time. In other words the mutators are go fast because no one can hit you, go fast because you have infinite boost, perform feats or lose and go fast against no opponents or lose. I’d be fatuitous if I said they didn’t change how the game feels, but when you’re doing the same course multiple times per tournament and there are multiple tournaments with those same courses it does start to feel extremely repetitive. All the higher difficulties do is increase the number of courses per event, culminating in the GRAND FINALE where you do 8 courses back-to-back. The same 8 courses you’ve been racing since the campaign started…

And honestly that’s about it, as the game has very little else to offer once you’ve cleared through the initial wave of tracks and played through the handful of mutators that are on offer. There is also a time trial mode which involves, err, racing on the same tracks against the developer times but that’s basically the same thing as the time trial mutator mode you’ve already played through in the campaign (albeit harder). There was a multiplayer mode for this game, but as stated the game came and went without causing much of a fuss and as such the game died years ago and even if you still found people who cared it’s too late as the servers are down. I suppose there is a modest customisation aspect to mention as you can choose different parts and liveries for the vehicle of your choice, but honestly these parts don’t change much and I was able to breeze through the entire game with the stock setup as the parts have a modest impact at best. You can increase handling in exchange for acceleration/boost, or vice-versa and that’s about it. The game does differentiate between ground and air handling, but really it’s all very minor stuff and I didn’t notice much of a difference to how my vehicle controlled even after I picked all of the +boost -handling parts.

In conclusion Nail’d is a fun little racing game that spreads itself too thin in the pursuit of the AAA price tag. Had it been released as a humble XBLA game, or a budget release then it would have been commendable and a fine example of a racing game that makes due with a modest amount of courses and a short soundtrack. The boost feats are fun to go for, the courses themselves are largely enjoyable and the AI is surprisingly honest for a racing game. Yet sadly this was not a budget title and was instead an example of an overly ambitious developer attempting to compete with the big boys, an attempt that leads to an unflattering conclusion. Nail’d is a decent game but one that quickly wears out it’s welcome and which needlessly prolongs it’s presence in the vain hope that you’ll consider it a worthy competitor to the bigger games of the era such as Motorstorm and Need for Speed (hell even Fuel has more content). Instead it merely highlights it’s own insecurities by forcing you to beat the same courses a dozen times each before dumping it’s half-assed ending onto you. Which I will unceremoniously share below (look away spoilers haters!)

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