In this review, we work up the speed classes in the GameCube game XGIII: Extreme Racing. We find out how well this racing game plays.
This game was released in 2001 and is the third instalment in the series.
We previously played the first game, Extreme-G. That game got a great score. While we have played the second game, we never got around to reviewing it so far. Still, we were curious about the third instalment, so decided to give that one a try.
There really isn’t much of a storyline in this game. It simply flashes a few messages such as how you need to be first and failure isn’t an option. Beyond that, there isn’t really a storyline.
You start off by picking a team. If you are familiar with either game before this, you’ll know that there is usually some statistics about each bike. Some favour turning and acceleration over top speed. Others dump everything into top speed with some added protection on the side. Regardless, you get to find the bike suited to your playing style. In this game, however, this has been completely stripped away. Instead, the difference between the bikes is simply deciding which colour you like. So, if you are wondering where all those stats went, they are gone completely.
The main game is found in the championship mode. You start off with the 250G cup. If you want to unlock more, you have to beat the previous cup to unlock the next. These are known as speed classes. The next cup up is the 500G cup. After that, you challenge the 750G cup. Finally, the top speed class if the 1000G cup. As you can imagine, the difficulty goes up not just with the overall speed increases, but also the toughness of your opponents.
Within each speed class are four cups: Lithium, Rubidium, Ceasium, and Francium. Each cup features three races on three different tracks. The number of laps is determined by the speed class. For 250G, you get only two laps. For the 500G and 750G classes, you have three laps. Finally, the 1000G cup has 4 laps.
If you’re like me and played the previous games, one of the big changes to this series is found on the tracks themselves. You might recall being able to send massive shockwaves down the track or firing heat seeking missiles down the track to an opponent or even blasting nearby rivals with a rail gun in previous games. Ultimately, a big draw wound up being all the interesting different weapons you can pick up off the track and use to your advantage. This ended up being largely scrapped.
Instead, you have two kinds of strips on the track instead. One strip recharges your shields and boost while the other recharges a single weapons bar. The green one recharges the energy while the purple recharges your weapons. You start the game with a simple little pulse weapon which can slow your opponents down. While this was a feature in the first Extreme-G game, it was a weapon you simply started with. In this game, this is probably the only weapon you have for a number of races.
You might be wondering where the weapons all went. As it turns out, they have all been taken off the track and dropped into a simple store in the menu’s between races. So, instead of picking up a massive mortar weapon and firing it at someone, you had to burn precious credits on a weapon you want to use. On the one hand, you get to keep it throughout the entire game unless you choose to sell it. On the other hand, these weapons use up your weapon energy. Even with tank and collection upgrades, sometimes, you just end up depleting your weapon energy quickly and are stuck with relying on pure speed to carry you across the finish line.
To make matters worse, a lot of weapons don’t really do a whole lot to really advance you in any way. If anything, the inclusion of weapons only makes your racing more difficult because your opponents will constantly drop mines in an often successful effort to slow you down. Probably the only weapon I ever found useful was the rear fire plasma weapon. This is only because it gave an additional slight boost in speed outside of your turbo.
Another change in the gameplay itself is something that isn’t really said in the game. It’s unfortunate because it can mean the difference between barely making it past the first speed class and getting quite far into the game. This is the inclusion of forwards and backwards leaning. In this game, momentum is a big key to your success. So, ideally, you want to preserve as much as possible as you race around the tracks. If you hit an uphill, you want to lean back to get more friction on your back tire. On downhills, you want to lean forwards to get better aerodynamics for your bike. This aspect is barely even shown, so all players see is that you seem to be winning races more often then them for some unknown reason.
Speed boosting is probably one of the few major improvements to this game. In previous games, you had only three boosts. You don’t really control how long your boost lasts, so you are really only looking for a great big long straightaway and hitting the boost button. In this game, you can pick and choose where and how long boosts lasts. This gives you a massive boost in control over managing your speed. The only caveat is your limited supply. What’s surprising is the fact that managing boosts is just as important as your leaning, so it is only one part of a successful strategy.
For me, generally speaking, this game represents a pretty big step back in terms of how an Extreme-G game can be. With a brand new title on a grand new console, this is the developers way of showcasing new possibilities and new innovative features for a franchise. This is especially the case when you are so early into a console life cycle. The very last thing you want to be doing is just taking a few steps back and trying to coast on the fame of a franchise title. This game largely does that.
A big reason this represents a step back is just with the features that are stepped back or stripped completely. With weapons no longer appearing as something you can collect on the track, already, the tracks seem much more samey then they should have been. Compound the fact that so many of them barely play a role in a players success, you’d almost get the impression that the weapons in this game were more of an afterthought rather than a major part of the game.
With the changes, it’s like the developers wanted to make this game into an F-Zero title. The similarities are certainly there with the weapons not really playing much of a role and recharge strips on the track themselves. For me, this is basically the same mistake made as when the developers turned the Rush series from a high flying stunt game with collectibles and cool tracks and tried to follow the illegal street racing style game as seen in L.A. Rush. An argument can be made that L.A. Rush killed the franchise entirely. The same kind of mistake is being made here where the developers seemed to take a working franchise with its own take on racing and turn it into a “just like other popular games” kind of game. The detrimental results are also the same.
Another feature that was stripped out completely are stats with different bikes. I personally thought this aspect really brought a depth to the overall game. Are you more about hitting corners hard or just blasting through straightaways at slightly higher top speeds? There is a bike for that. Are yo more about combat and blowing up other bikes? There is a bike for that. In this game, it strikes me as completely nonsensical that this be taken away completely. It almost defeats the purpose of having different teams when everyone races the same. Ultimately, the lack of differing stats on different bikes cheapened the gameplay by a fair bit.
That being said, it isn’t an all bad game either. In this game, you also have that sense of racing on a borderline rollercoaster race track. This is complete with loops, jumps, drops, and even climbing up 90 degree hills. This ultimately helps give this game that sense of momentum which is part of the game’s namesake. While the tracks themselves are devoid of your usual weapon pickup plates and zippers, they still do a good job at keeping gameplay rather interesting. So, in that regard, some of the slack left behind by lack of features is picked up somewhat by the track design at its core.
Another feature that does hold some promise is the concept of the store. This aspect is novel and new to the series and does bring that promise of being able to buy parts and attach them to your bike for improvements. It does remind me of what amounts to a stripped down version of the garage feature found in Rush 2049 where you could pick better engines, tires, and more. If it was much more complete and transitioned well between the different speed classes, it could arguably make up a lot of ground left behind by a lack of track features. Unfortunately, it felt largely incomplete, but at least it shows promise for future titles.
Generally speaking, my overall opinion is that of disappointment for the game itself. While the track designs, at their core, add a nice level of excitement with its rollercoaster style design, the stripping of various features in a seeming effort to imitate other racing titles left me with a sense of lost opportunity. The game itself was released right when the GameCube itself is just taking off. It could have left a major lasting impression with bold new features while keeping what made the original so exciting. Unfortunately, stripped out features like bike stats and weapon pickups that helped make the previous games so interesting is either held back or stripped entirely. While it is an OK game, I can’t help but think that it could have been a whole lot better.
Graphically speaking, this is probably one of the stronger parts of the game. With the game industry moving past the era of the surprisingly good N64 vs the surprisingly mediocre Playstation era to the PS2 vs GameCube era, the graphics shown on this game is pretty good. It has some nice updated models of the bikes and the tracks themselves just have a nice smoother look and feel to them.
Adding to this are the environments that range from thick rainforests to desolate winter wonderlands to even a giant dam. The different environments really help make this game one of those rich eye-candy experiences only matched by some of the most high end N64 titles like Beetle Adventure Racing at the time. Even the special effects like the punch-pull effect of enemy weapons work quite well. I think the game could have done better on the special effects (like, maybe adding more to other weapons). Still, it’s a very solid playing experience on this front.
Audio is a bit more hit and miss. While in the first game, the music is pretty much next level style music, this game takes a completely different approach and brings on board licensed music. To be fair, the developers pulled from a very respectable source: The Ministry of Sound. At the time, Ministry of Sound is really starting to get on a good roll of producing some high quality electronic music.
The thing is, the music doesn’t exactly tie together some of the themes for the tracks all that well. On their own, the tracks are decent for a general sound, but nothing that screams one theme or the other. If anything, this game might be a good argument that music be developed in-house rather than just pulling from existing catalogues. It’s OK, but nothing spectacular or memorable. Sound effects are decent and the voice samples work decently well. So, a decent experience, but nothing to get overly excited over.
Overall, this is one of those games I was pretty excited to play thanks to the great memories of the first game in the series, but walked away disappointed. The weapons feature has been pulled back to the point of being borderline useless for you and works against your favour in the end. The stats for the bikes are stripped completely from the game for no real good reason. While the tracks are well designed, they only partly make up for a borderline lacklustre feature list. Graphics are quite solid for a game of its time, but the audio is only decent. So, an OK game, but with a series that shows so much promise, this is pretty disappointing.
Overall
Furthest point in game: Finished 7th in the third race of the first cup on the 750G class (1st in track 1 and 2nd in track 2).
General gameplay: 17/25
Replay value: 7/10
Graphics: 7/10
Audio: 3/5
Overall rating: 68%
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Facebook.
