When "Speed" was chosen as the theme for the 2004 Virginia Film Festival, it is unlikely the festival's organizers had videogames in mind. Nonetheless, in a nifty coincidence, this semester happens to house a handful of heavyweight racing games, giving this fall the speediest gaming lineup in years.
SRS: Street Racing Syndicate, an underground racer in the vein of the Midnight Club and Need for Speed: Underground series, shipped for all consoles just after move-in day. Playable at the Entertainment Software Association's Electronic Entertainment Expo in May, the Namco-published racer featured loose driving physics that caused cars to slide errantly around sharp turns and careen off walls without any visible damage or affected handling. (Most games with licensed vehicles -- SRS features 50 cars from makers like Lexus and Mitsubishi -- cannot simulate damage to brand-name vehicles because of contractual obligations.) Namco would do well to concentrate on resuscitating its Ridge Racer instead of jumping on the street racer bandwagon with the middling SRS.
On the other hand, NASCAR 2005: Chase for the Cup, released just after SRS, incorporates damage affects, both cosmetically and in vehicle performance -- an aggressive bump-and-grind racing style will result in frequent pit stops. NASCAR 2005 is the first of many stellar racing games from Electronic Arts this fall.
Burnout 3: Takedown, the second game in EA's racing line-up, is currently topping PS2 and Xbox charts worldwide after just a week in release.
EA snatched the Burnout series from a floundering Acclaim earlier this year, then proceeded to buy Burnout's developer, Criterion Software, this summer.
Though the Burnout series has been showered with critical praise for its zippy graphics and kinetic car crashes, neither of the first two games in the series converted its potential into strong sales. But EA's acquisition of the Burnout property has resulted in a ubiquitous online ad campaign as well as an excess of press coverage.
That said, Takedown's hype has been legitimized by a total package of intuitive controls, innovative in-game features, and a presentation slicker than the former arcade racer standard, Need for Speed: Underground, also from EA.
Takedown evolves the series' heritage of spectacular vehicular crashes, now employing an "Impact Time" mode whereby a gamer can manipulate the slow motion trajectory of a crashed car in order to take out rival racers. This "Impact Time" makes crashing fun, thereby aggrandizing what is often the least exhilarating aspect of high-speed racing: the inevitable, uninspired re-spawn after a spectacular crash. A crash used to represent a competitive failure, but now, Criterion has taken the crash-and-re-spawn staple of the racing genre and turned it into a creative opportunity for the gamer. Brilliant. And as near to arcade racing nirvana as a gamer can come.
Need for Speed: Underground 2 completes EA's fall 2004 racing triumvirate mid-November. Underground 2 looks to expand upon the success of the original Fast and Furious-inspired street racer -- the original Underground sold 1.7 million copies for the PlayStation 2 last year, second only to Madden 2004.
But above all other games, some PS2 gamers could survive on nothing more than a copy of Polyphony Digital's Gran Turismo 4, this semester's most anticipated racing title. With 50 race courses and more than 500 cars from over 80 developers dating back as far as 1886, GT 4 blows other games out of the water when it comes to simulation racing both on and off the track. The Gran Turismo series' trademark career mode will undoubtedly play a prominent role and automobile enthusiasts are already salivating over the new "photo mode," where gamers can snap pics of their souped-up autos in exotic locales or true-to-life tracks.
So, just as C-Ville film-goers will experience a variety of cinematic representations of "Speed" next month, so too will gamers experience a smattering of speed in racing games this semester. From the gearhead simulations of GT 4 and Colin McRae to the arcade action of Burnout and Outrun 2, this semester will surely satisfy gamers' need for speed.
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