| Nintendo 64 Review | |
| Category | Racing |
| Players | 1-2 |
| Difficulty | Medium |
| Review Date | 7/99 |
| Publisher | Midway |
by Tim "Leadfoot" Hsu
By
now, many of you have seen this game and all the eye-candy it has to offer at
your neighborhood game-retailer, or in some biased print mag. Trust me, picutres
don't do this game justice. We're talking make-your-jaw-drop-faster-than-seeing-Sarah
Michelle Gellar-naked good. We're talking blistering fast frame rates with no
perceptible slow-down. And most impressively, we're talking very little or no
pop-up whatsoever without sacrificing beautiful environments like the Las Vegas
strip at dusk or Hawaii bathed in a deep orange sunset. There's also a high-res
mode where you can race on a letterbox screen with even crisper graphics - all
without the use of memory expansion. This baby uses the power of the N64 to
its full potential.
Graphics aside, World Driver Championship offers a feature I'd like to see more of in racing sims - Team Racing. Basically, you start off as a nobody, ranked 30th in the world. Only two teams will take a chance on you while the others thumb their noses at your inexperience. Depending on how well you do on the circuit, you will earn points that will eventually raise your world ranking. Keep placing, and you'll have team offers pouring in.
However, your present team knows a good racer when they have one, so they might soup up your car to keep you from jumping ship. There's also team loyalty to factor into this equation as well. The longer you stick with a team, the faster you'll be able to get behind the wheel of one of their best racers. Jump around to too many teams, and they'll all be reluctant to let you even look at their prized vehicles.
Not only does each team have a unique vehicle, but each team owner has a different personality as well. Some owners are easy-going and some are just plain easy to piss off. Step on the wrong toes and the closest you'll get to that special Viper is watching it blow by you on the track. The team-racing aspect of WDC gives the racing genre a whole new dimension, and I'd like to take a little credit for the idea. (See NASCAR 99). [Confidential to Midway: Please send my royalty check as soon as possible]
Granted, WDC isn't a full-oon sim, but don't let this fool you into thinking the game is too simple or arcade-ish. However, the first thing hardcore racing sim fans will notice is the lack of a car customization feature. I was greatly disappointed in this as well. To compensate for this, you get versions of the same car only with different paint jobs and better stats in the typical categories; Acceleration, Top Speed, Handling, and Weight. So beware of the box hype that proudly boasts, "Over 30 highly detailed exotic cars...!"; about half of them are the same, only with different stats.
One
of the most curious omissions is car licensing. The game includes several production
vehicles including the Ford Mustang, Porsche 911, Lotus Esprit Turbo, Chevrolet
Corvette, and Dodge Viper - all racing under fictitious names. My only question
is if the cars aren't licensed, why didn't Boss include any car damage? This
would've added an extra dimension to the visual wonders the game already possesses.
Although WDC is lacking a few important elements of a true racing sim, it still holds its own in the genre quite well. However, for hardcore sim fans, playing this game is kinda like watching a stripper; it's fun as hell while it lasts, but you're left yearning for much more, and chances are you'll look elsewhere to get it. [Tim, is that what happened to the money in my desk drawer? ~Ed]
Car physics and handling, while not the best I've played are still very, very respectable. Extra marks for not cheesing out with the "lazy susan" school of handling (See F1 World Grand Prix), and also for giving each car vastly different handling characteristics based on weight. The lighter cars like the 911 spin out and get pushed around more easily, while the heavier ones like the Vette are more stable and able to send a lighter car into a spin. The only complaint I have is that some cars go into a four-wheel power slide way too easily. While this is good for rally-type racers where the cars race on less than perfect surfaces at over 100mph, it's just wrong on 'Stang taking a hairpin at 70mph.
The sound flat-out sucks. Remember playing the old Days of Thunder game for the PC? Well, it's not much better than that. The engines of the higher-revving cars sound like cheapo Conair hair dryers. Move to the cockpit view, and the good news is that the engine no longer sounds like you've just stepped out of the shower. The bad news is it sounds like a muffled vacuum cleaner. Music isn't any better with loud, insistent guitar riffs that just add to the cacophony of noise.
One last feature worthy of note: WDC has as good, if not better, replays
than "that other Playstation racing
game", but with the addition of a helicopter cam that provides absolutely
magnificent angles on the race. World Driver Championship will satisfy
your speed cravings for quite a while. Just when you think you've conquered
the game on the GT2 circuit, you discover it's only half over as you have yet
to race on the GT1 circuit and raise your rank to #1 in the world. So skip out
on the Formula One and NASCAR titles this year; there's a new kid racing around
the block.
| Revolution Report Card |
| B+ |
| + Beautiful, smooth graphics. + Team racing! + Above-average car physics - No customization - Turn up the stereo, turn off the sound. |
