Review - Classic Car Racing (PC - Steam & PC-CDRom)
Title: Classic Car Racing
Genre: Racing
Developer: X-Bow Software
Publisher: 1C Company
Release Date: 22 Jan 2010
What 1C Say about the game:
Classic Car Racing, A Game basing itself on the classic car theme and time period using the Chrome Engine, If you don't know or never heard of the Chrome engine is a 3D Game Engine developed by Techland. This game uses the Second incarnation of the engine.When your life seems to be one long traffic jam and more of your time is spent on the "home-work-home" driving route its time to get back to what driving is all about.
Classic Car Racing will give you the chance to escape the rat race and experience the thrill of driving classic cars from the 1940's-60's. Crank up the cool driving tunes and head for the beach as you cruise around in stylish automobiles enjoying the sun, sea, beautiful landscapes and pretty girls on vacation!
So get out of the city and say no to faceless modern commuter cars and get back to the retro driving experience of Classic Cars Racing.
* Unique "car park" which consists of stylish automobiles from the 1940's - 60's to drive.
* 14 cabriolets to drive.
* 16 routes with the total length of 92 kilometres.
* Bright, colourful graphics with vivid landscapes.
* Dynamic music to enhance the driving mood.
* Eternal summer by the sea.
Now personally I've always found this engine clunky and not very smooth in hindsight that could be due more to the poor utilisation of the engine itself rather than the engine. Unfortunately this was very evident in Classic Car Racing. The game on a whole feels like its without any polish at all. one of those games you would expect to find in a Pound land or Dollar Store.
Right off the bat it will ask you to make a Profile as most games do and choose a Character and boy.... it seems to have the worst Stereotyping since "Human Killing Machine" on the Atari ST. No matter who you pick, however, it will have no bearing on the game other than who is sitting in the car.
Moving on, there is not many game modes to be had: Arcade and Carrier.
In Arcade mode you get to pick from your unlocked cars and tracks, and as you can imagine its just racing with no rewards to be had. You can pick any upgrades you like for your car in this mode, and I am not sure why you wouldn't want a fully upgraded one right away opposed to an unupgraded car, especially when you take the AI into consideration - which ill touch on later.
Next up is Carrier mode, which is arcade mode with a half hearted Gran Turismo style twist.
You can buy cars and upgrades in this mode, However it isn't always as clear as it first seems. For instance, when you first enter the mode, it states you have no car and x money. So you look around for a Car Shop or Buy Car button, but for some reason it's actually located in the "Change Car" where you would otherwise expect the equivalent of Gran Turismo's garage option to be. This also continues with Upgrades, which are found in the Change Upgrades menu. Seeing this made me wonder why the options wasn't named "Buy / Change Car" and "Buy / Change Upgrades", This would have saved some confusion but there we go. At least they're consistent.
As you can imagine races earn you money which you can spend on better cars - once you unlock them - and upgrades, which you will want if you wish to get far into this game.
Normally, you would want these upgrades because upgrades make you faster. However, the bigger reason for wanting upgrades here has more to do with the very poor game AI. This game AI is screwy on multiple counts. For one, when you need to be reset, and second, the opponents themselves. Starting with the opponents: They seem to have a very rigid path they will do anything to stick to... unfortunately including ramming your car or each other's cars. Given that this game also has poor damage effects, this leads to more issues for you. For example, in one race at the starting line, once we started one of the AI drivers merely touched my car. This caused no damage, I wasn't moved in any way, yet the game decided to reset my car. This again wouldn't have been so bad... if there wasn't a resetting penalty of 3 seconds without movement. Given how ram-happy the AI is, this pours more salt in the wound of what you already have to put up with. Also, you cannot even make any contact with any of the onlookers no matter what, even if you were knocked into them. This too will cause you a reset penalty.
The tracks themselves also seem rather unimaginative. Just your regular winding roads with what appear to be the same props over and over. The landscape is bland, and there is plenty of popup to be had all around. The cars themselves, however, are not too bad in detail. At least in comparison to everything else. Sadly, the animation also doesn't feel smooth. Antistrophic is also nonexistent in this game. Even when enabled, I couldn't get the game to look blurred on the road more than 10ft away from me.
The music is awful. I really mean this, you will hate it the second it hits your ears. Thankfully you can turn it off. The music is the cheesiest rubbish I've had the misfortune to hear in quite some time. In terms of sound effects, there is not a whole lot going on here. All the effects seem to be fairly stock and it wouldn't surprise me if they were all Royalty-free samples. As an extra note, they couldn't seem to add a race start counter or voice acting for it.
Attempting to use an analogue controller for this game is not advisable: My car would not stop wandering until I switched my steering to the D-Pad. I tested this using a 360 Wireless Controller. So: Analogue joystick, no. D-Pad, sure.
Wrapping things up: The AI is rigid. The game is car reset happy with penalties, but once you have a few upgrades the game will stop being any kind of challenge, like most GT-style games would. The sound is awful. In point of fact, I highly doubt anyone would give this subpar game more than 30 minutes of their life before removing it from their hard drive.
Presentation: 2/10 - What you would expect from a Dollar Store / Pound Land or Free Give away
Graphics: 3/10 - Cars look ok, Animation needs work and the lack of Antistrophic filtering and popup graphics ruin it visually
Sound: 2/10 - Sound effects are all Stock and music will make your eardrums explode
Playability: 4/10 - Get a few upgrades and stay away from the AI and the game almost resembles an Outrun style racer
Replayability: 2/10 - You're not likely to even make it past 30 minutes in your first playthrough, let alone come back to it.
Final Score: 26 / 100
Game available on Steam here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/46220/
