|
The pudding that bankrupted a thousand insurance agencies:
"No! My pudding! I'm going to get you for this!"
With those fateful words lamenting the loss of her beloved
bowl of pudding, one of the four main characters in Wreckless
embarks of a journey of destruction and vengeance. I'm not
kidding either. If this sounds like a painfully bad plot to
you, then you're right. Wreckless is definitely not a game
you're wrapped up in the story. Wreckless isn't even a game
that you play because it's all that fun either. What Wreckless
is, however, is one of those rare games that you play simply
because it looks so damned good.
If you'd like to get a good mental image of what playing
this game is like, imagine Super Mario 64 with cars. Can't
imagine that? Neither could I till I played Wreckless. The
back of the box has the company line, "Rip up the streets.
Rub out the mob", but it really should be "Break
things for stupid reasons." For the entirety of the game,
you're either racing through traffic from check point to check
point against the clock (which can be fun), ramming enemy
cars to destroy them or steal something from them (which can
be really fun), or doing precision jumps from platform to
platform to achieve some horrible ridiculous objective while
the clock ticks down. This last style of game play, unfortunately,
sucks so much that it impacts the game overall.
Did I mention the horrid voice acting? No? Well I'll do that
now. The dialog, both the writing and speaking there of, is
some of the worst I've ever heard in a game. It's particularly
obvious in contrast to the amazing graphics. In fact, it's
so bad that I would felt embarrassed for the actors who have
to eternally live with the shame of having lent voice to this
train wreck of a script.
Let's talk more about the reason behind all this mayhem though.
There are very, very few missions that make any sense what
so ever, and the plot itself feels like it was tacked on at
the last possible moment to provide some semblance of a reason
for the events in the game. This is not at all helped by the
fact that you have to select each mission separately from
a list rather than one mission flowing into the next. This
has the unfortunate effect of making Wreckless feel like a
collection of mini-games for the hapless loner... since there
is absolutely zero multiplayer modes available. To make matters
worse, you are dropped into a breathtakingly beautiful rendering
of Hong Kong with no option, unlockable or otherwise, to simply
drive around and enjoy the graphics. This, my friends, is
a sin.
Speaking of the graphics... wow. If only Grand Theft Auto
3 looked like this.
That's an in game shot from one of the night missions. All
the cars reflect what's around them perfectly. All the neon
glows just like you would expect it to. Everything in this
game looks absolutely spectacular. However, little details
like the pedestrians only look good if you're flying by them
at 50 MPH. Honestly, I find the bizarre animations used for
the pedestrians to be somewhat unsettling. Even more unsettling
is that you can't run over them no matter how much you try.
Come on, people... if you're going to put pedestrians on the
road you better let them get run over. They don't even have
to die. They could take the Smuggler's Run approach and let
them get up and run away after flying through the air. Instead,
they make them avoid contact with your car at all times even
it means running at twice the speed of light to jump out of
the way.
Overall, Wreckless is a decent game. However, don't expect
it to replace your hunger for Gotham Racing or Gran Turismo
3. This is not a racing game. It's an action/platformer/racing
game... if can believe it. Definitely rent this one before
you buy it to make sure you can enjoy this very odd genre
blending. Or, if you want something to show off the graphical
superiority of your Xbox, you can't go wrong with Wreckless.
-K'Tok
|
