In this review, we try earning the race tokens in the Gamecube game, Drome Racers. We find out how well this racing game plays.
This game was released in 2003. It’s supposed to continue the Lego Racers series.
There isn’t much to the story in the game itself. You’re name is Max and you come on board with Team Nitro as a rookie driver. You’re goal is to be the best racer in the Drome. That’s pretty much it.
There are three modes of play you can play: Quick Race, Arcade Mode, and Career.
Quick race allows you to play a single race. The game basically decides the car configuration, track, and conditions for you. You just race and see if you can beat your opponents.
Arcade mode is basically like Quick Race mode, only you can choose the settings you want to have. This includes the car you want, the track, number of laps, and condition. It all depends on what you’ve unlocked in the Career mode.
Career mode is the main game mode for the game. You play this mode to unlock everything in the game.
You’ll have three characters in the garage with you. This includes Slot, Rocket, and Shicane.
Slot is the person you go to when you want to save or load a career. In addition, he also tracks how much of the game you’ve completed.
Rocket is a retired racer. He can offer you tips and simple tutorials on different aspects of the game. In addition, he handles all the available one-on-one challenges that unlocks as you complete the MCR races.
Shicane is the person you go to for everything else. This includes car building, car upgrades, and accessing the main championship races (or MCRs).
When you start off, you’ll have only three cars in your garage. Each car is for the three different types of terrain you’ll encounter.
In each MCR, there are three race types: Drag racing, road races, and dirt races.
Every MCR starts with a drag race. All 6 racers compete in one-on-one heats. In each round, the bottom two times are eliminated until an order is determined. The ultimate order dictates the starting position for the first actual race. It’s not the end of the world if you either lose or don’t bother with this because you gain nothing other than pole position with this. Still, one thing to keep in mind is that the worse you perform in this race, the more traffic you’ll have to fight on the second race.
The other two modes are road races and dirt races. Road racers are on largely paved roads while dirt races are basically your rally style racing courses. Road races generally focus on your cornering ability and your skill in finding fast lines during the race. Dirt races, however, are filled with hills and jumps. So, while cornering helps, you’ll also be focusing on where you end up landing after each jump on top of it all. In earlier races, this doesn’t seem all that important or have much bearing on your performance in races. In later races, however, this can make a huge impact on your chances of winning a race.
Every race after the drag race is either a road race or a dirt race. You’ll have the start line and your position depends on how well you did in the drag racing. Generally speaking, the top two positions are ideal to be in. It’s not the end of the world if you wind up in the third and fourth position. Things get quite challenging in the back two positions. As Shicane says, it’s not recommended.
After the second race, the game takes your time and uses it to stagger the starts for racers in the next race. If you finish two second ahead of second place, you’ll start two seconds ahead of that opponent. After the second race, the time is then totaled up and all leads carry over to the remaining races. This continues until the championship is complete. It is more than possible on some races to complete a whole lap before some of the worst performing opponents even starts the race. Just remember that they might fight you in the process as you race.
During the drag racing, you’ll be operating a manual vehicle. Success is determined based both on the performance of your car and how well you shift gears. When the ideal time ti shift gears is actually dependent on the car and specs. Sometimes, you shift later on to avoid skidding. However, other vehicles compel you to shift much earlier in order to benefit from maximum acceleration. Shift too early and you blow out your motor. Shift too late and you, well, won’t go very fast and you risk burning out your motor anyway. It’s all about feel and practice.
In the other two races, the game has a much more arcade style of racing that might sound familiar if you’ve played other games like Mario Kart 64. Along the course are green arrows. These are basically nitro boosters. Run over these and experience a nice boost in speed. Some boosts are harder to reach than others. In addition, the rout you get in a race also adjusts the positions of these boosters. Generally, you’ll want to hit as many as possible, but there are times where you’ll rather try and collect an item then get extra speed.
In addition to this are green items along the track. These items repair your car. As you race, you’ll probably take damage from enemy fire or hitting something along the way (be it an obstacle or an opponent). This causes your car to take damage. You’ll have four units on the lower left hand corner of your screen. Lose them all and parts of your car will fly off. I don’t think it’s possible to actually die during the race, but I do believe you take a slight performance hit if you lose all of those units. So, a nice way to repair your car is to run over these green items. This can repair anywhere between one unit to your whole meter.
Finally, there are red items. This allows you to pick up a weapon along the way. What that weapon is is entirely random. You can only hold on to one of these at a time, so you’ll have to keep that in mind when managing these weapons.
Weapons you can get include a mine to lay on the track, EMP weapon to temporarily disable an opponent, a guided missile, and a hover car power up.
The EMP weapon can be the most effective weapon in the game on your opponents. If you get a lock on an opponent ahead of you, you can fire the weapon and it will track down the enemy. When it attaches on top of the enemy, they will slow to a crawl and be unable to fire a weapon. At the very least, you’ll be able to significantly catch up to an opponent. The problem is when an opponent fires one on you. The same effect naturally applies to you. The game recommends you steer in the path of an opponent to slow that opponent down. This might temporarily slow down an opponent, but you’ll still suffer from the effects of the EMP. A much more effective defense is to hit a wall. This causes the EMP to explode and eliminate this weapons effect much sooner than expected.
Another weapon is the guided missile. Lock on to an enemy and fire away. This causes your opponent to fly up in the air uncontrollably for a bit. This can be really useful for slowing down opponents ahead of you. When an enemy tries firing one of these at you, one of your only defenses is to hope you have a shield in your inventory at the time. You’ll head a slow arpeggio sound when an opponent has locked on to you. When that sound increases in speed and pitch, fire up the shield and it will easily thwart a missile. Unfortunately, there is no way of telling the difference between a locked on missile and a locked on EMP. So, you’ll simply have to guess it’s a missile and contend with the EMP after if it’s not a missile.
The hover jets gives you a nice small boost in speed. In addition to this, you’ll hover over mines on the road without worry. This is great until you hit large bumps and turns. This is because while you are in the air, you have little stability. It’s easy to flip and roll your car in the air with this. So, best thing you can do is use this on reasonably straight parts of the course to get the full effect of this item. Otherwise, this will likely only serve to slow you down significantly.
There are other weapons in the game, but that’s a good idea of some of the weapons you can get in the game.
When you complete an MCR, you’ll be able to unlock the next MCR. In the beginner class, there are 5 MCR’s. In the intermediate class, there are 6 MCR’s. Finally, there is the expert class which contains a whopping 7 MCR’s. Generally speaking, the progress tree is fairly linear, but you will be able to unlock the next class before beating every MCR in the previous. Just remember that the next class features tougher, faster opponents, so it might be a good idea to simply complete the class before moving on to the next (at least, that’s what I wound up doing anyway).
Not only do you unlock new classes and MCRs as you race, but you’ll also unlock one-on-one races with individual opponents. The game tell you when this is unlocked. Each opponent compels you to race them in a single course, but 4 different variations of that track. Beat that opponent in all four variations and you’ll complete the challenge. Generally speaking, you can take on the challenge any time you want after unlocking them, but it’s ideal to complete it as soon as possible to get the effect of winning additional credits. These challenges also count towards your in-game completion rating. So, sooner or later, you’ll have to beat them in order to get 100% completion.
Along the way, you’ll also earn build tokens. Build tokens allows you to build new cars in the garage. The default starting cars are decent, but it’s more than possible to build better. You start off with the tires you want to use. This determines which kind of car you are building. After that, you select between one of the three chassis you want to use. After that, you’ll get a selection of shell you want to use. Sometimes, there is only one shell, but generally, there are two shells for each configuration. After that, your car is complete.
One thing to remember is that not all cars are created equal. Some cars generally perform better than others. What I will say is to never bother with the three wheeled dirt car. That one is, for practical purposes, impossible to handle even though the statistics look pretty good. So, save your build token for something better. Even computer opponents can hardly handle something like that during the race. I almost question why this particular vehicle was even put into the game in the first place. A lot about building is simply guess work, but there is enough build tokens in the game to give you a reasonable chance to get the best cars in the game. By the time you complete the game, you’ll unlock just about every car in the game, really.
In addition to this, winning races will earn you credits. The harder the race, the more credits you earn. These credits go to car upgrades. The game doesn’t really explain this too well, but when you buy an upgrade, the upgrade applies to every car. So, if you get a level 2 engine, every car has that level 2 engine.
Upgrades are generally quite expensive throughout the game. The level 1 upgrades are the cheapest, but later levels require much more credits. You can snag level 5 equipment, but be sure to drop a sizeable 6 figure sum of credits to get it.
Some games like RPM (Radical Psycho Machine) allow for grinding. Generally speaking, the way this game is built, grinding for credits is difficult, but possible. To grind, simply race in the hardest MCR or challenge race you’ve already won. That way, it’s possible to get a decent enough amount of change in order to make it worth it. Otherwise, you’d likely spend hours trying to grind up the cash with the way the prizes go up. I will say that when I got the level 5 aerodynamics and engine combined with a level 4 tires and turbo, the final boss of the game was generally very easy to beat. So, you won’t necessarily have to worry about getting the top stats in the game just to stay competitive.
For me, the most jarring thing about this game is just how much about Lego this game is. So, when I got into it, I was expecting to possibly build cars brick by brick or something. When I actually got into the game, the Lego intro and logo is about all the Lego this game has to offer. Arguably, you have the spiritual concept of building cars from a general standpoint, but this winds up being standard customization more than anything else. There’s really very little resemblance with this game and actual Lego. It’s like the license only allowed for the use of the logo and the developers had to swap out Lego aspects at the last minute. It’s very odd.
In addition to this, when I got to the expert races, a lot of my success depended more on luck than skill. Sometimes, I’m able to get a lead and breeze through the laps without too much of a problem. Other times, I found myself getting hit by a rocket, getting pinned by an opponent for a period of time, and finding it impossible to even get close to winning the race after. Sometimes, I lose the lead for whatever reason and get nothing but repulsing weapon and shields until it’s too late. So, a lot of my losses felt more like hard luck more than something I did wrong as a player.
What I do like is the concept of staggered starts. It felt like I earned a lot of those leads and got rewarded for particularly good performances in the races themselves. So, for me, that concept got a nice thumbs up from me.
The game did feel quite linear, though. Games like Gran Turismo 2 offered nice little side challenges to pad the bank account. Different races under different conditions. This game only offers a handful of one-on-one challenges and that’s it. Progress trees are fairly linear, so there wasn’t much freedom for the player to really explore different nooks and crannies in this game.
The build process could have been more informative. All I got was a car that looked different. It isn’t until after the build is complete that I found out how worth it it was to build that car or not. I wish I had better control over it to be honest.
The tracks themselves are well designed. I like the concept of alternative routs. It’s a lot like the different races found in Multi-Racing Championship. While that game wasn’t that good, that is once concept I liked about the game. So, this is good from my standpoint. In addition to that, the game permitted going both forward and backwards similar to Rush 2: Extreme Racing USA. That also gets a thumbs up. Overall, the tracks are reasonably well designed. Not the best I’ve ever seen, but many of them are, at least, respectable.
Generally speaking, this game has strengths and weaknesses. The linear nature of progress does leave a bit to be desired in this game. The build process, while seemingly quite expansive, isn’t all that informative and leaves players guessing a bit. Some of the more challenging races depends more on luck than actual skill as well (getting the right weapons to win or getting nothing but shields to make the race all but impossible). The lack of any real presence of Lego is also quite odd. Meanwhile, the track designs are quite nice. A flawed, but respectable effort here.
Graphics are OK in this game. How you like the graphics likely depends on what you’ve also played in the era. If you’ve played something like Mario Kart: Double Dash!! or F-Zero GX, the graphics are kind of bad. However, if you’ve played something like XGRA: Extreme G Racing Association or Silent Hill 3, the game actually holds up quite well. Generally, the scenery is actually well done, though the character models are, well, OK, but nothing huge. I consider this a reasonable effort all around.
Audio is, well, a mixed bag. Some of the music is very forgettable while others are actually pretty decent. Standing alone, Array is actually decent, though the engine sounds do drown out the better parts of the track. Red Creek Cavern, however, still gets out what it needs to to be a very respectable track that has some resemblance to punk rock style music. Meanwhile, the voice acting is quite respectable as well. So, that gets a thumbs up from me. Sound effects also pick up some of the slack as well. In the end, a reasonable effort all around.
Overall, this is a reasonable game to play. The lack of any real Lego reference outside of the logo’s and the intro is quite odd. Some of the more difficult races depends a bit too much on luck more than skill. The build process relies quite a bit on guesswork more than anything else. Additionally, the game is a bit on the linear side. Still, the courses are reasonably well designed with alternate routes and conditions. Graphics are certainly reasonable in this game, though not the best I’ve ever seen. Audio is also reasonable. So, a reasonable game all around.
Overall
Furthest point in game: Earned a 100% completion on this game.
General gameplay: 18/25
Replay value: 7/10
Graphics: 7/10
Audio: 3/5
Overall rating: 70%
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Facebook.
