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Rating: Average Speed Punks could have been a very good game if it weren't for one very big flaw: It controls about as well as an abnormally large goat who's cranked up on Surge and past due on his medication. The rest of the game is completely unoriginal, but still somewhat entertaining. One of the most basic elements of any cart racing game is having a diverse cast of likable characters. There are only six characters to choose from in Speed Punks, and they're all six-year-old kids with overly- cutesy designs. The graphical look of the characters (with no arms or legs) is a carbon copy of Ubi Soft's Rayman series. Everything about the characters makes you hate each and every one of them, including their cheesy names. For example, one of them is named Montgomery Carlo, and his nickname is Monty. Get it? Monty Carlo? I don't think it's funny either. The graphics are very bright and colorful, but like the rest of the game, they're also generic. The music is so nondescript it's almost not even there, and the constant squealing of your engine is annoying. The voice-overs on the character select screen seem to have been added to the game for the sole purpose of making you hate all the characters even more than you already do. Speed is another thing that's important in any racing game, and another area in which this game comes up short. There is almost no sense of speed whatsoever on the easy difficulty level, and only a little bit on the medium and hard levels. No matter what difficulty level you're on, there doesn't seem to be much difference between 75 and 125 miles per hour. Using a turbo seems to make you speed up only slightly rather than giving you a major boost. Like most average games, Speed Punks has some balance problems. Some of the course designs have points where you can easily go the wrong way without realizing it until you've blown your lead in the race. Of course, you'll know not to go that way next time, but don't tell that to someone who just lost the final race in a league because the developers of the game couldn't be bothered to lay out the courses logically. Another balance problems comes in the form of the game's slime, which is the equivalent of Mario Kart's bananas. Slime is hard to see until you run into it, and it's also very inconsistent. Sometimes it slows you down drastically, and sometimes it barely affects you. Speed Punks' biggest flaw is its horrible control. The control is touchy and over-simplified at the same time with the "power-skidding" buttons. They got half of that name right. You'll be doing plenty of skidding, but there won't be anything particularly powerful about it. Power-skidding through turns often makes you go slower than you would if you did nothing and bumped up against a wall. Whether you use the power- skid buttons or not, you'll often spin out of control or slow down considerably for no apparent reason. While Crash Team Racing took cart racing games to the next level in every way, Speed Punks brings absolutely nothing new to the table. Even if it had been more unique, no game with control this bad could ever be worth buying. Send your thoughts on this review to ivan@mastergamer.com
© 2001 ivan@mastergamer.com