Armstrong XBOX Info and Reviews

Fantastic graphics, incredible surround sound, and speaking as an old-school "mouse and keyboard rules" PC gamer, surprisingly good control. The only bad thing I can say about this game is that multiplayer is really  fun, but saving doesn't work correctly for cooperative play, so beware of that before you spend an evening working well into the campaign with your son only to find that you have to start over again next time you want to play.

The game is not only about racing, but also about driving with "style". Power-sliding around corners gains you "Kudos" points, and the more slides and cone gates you link together, the higher your points grow. Hitting a wall, cone, or opponent's car wipes out any Kudos that haven't been banked. If a tough section of the course is coming up, you can slow down and let your points "bank", or you can barrel through and "let it ride". When you can complete nearly an entire lap of cone-slaloming and power-sliding, building up a huge amount of Kudos, always on the edge of losing them all, it is a thrill not often found while sitting in front of a TV with a joystick in your hands. 

Even though I got a good deal on it on Ebay, I probably should have just rented it. After the incredible fun of Project Gotham, I was trying to get my hands on as many racing games as possible.

I'm not as big a fan of this rally-type racing as I am of the street-style in PGR, partially because for several of the races, you are on the track alone just racing against the clock. You do get feedback as to how you are doing compared to the times set by the other competitors, but I prefer to have the competitors on the track with me at the same time so we can trade paint like nature intended. Luckily, half of the game types (Rallycross and Ice Racing) do allow this. Ice racing is the coolest, and the Xbox's graphical capabilities really shine when rendering the rough ice on the track. 

I like this game quite a bit, but it is another case of the racing fun not quite measuring up to Project Gotham. Others may prefer this style, and from what I can tell, this game may be the best of its kind.

The greatest sense of speed in a racing game yet! We rented the original Burnout and really enjoyed it, but it wasn't quite good enough to buy. Then Burnout 2 came out on the PS2. We rented that and really enjoyed it, but all the while I was thinking "I wish this was on Xbox". I was dreaming of smoother frame-rates, better textures, better handling, and proper Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound for those spectacular multi-car smashups. Well, now it is on Xbox, and though we haven't yet bought it, we sure did enjoy our one week rental. It was actually the most we've had the Xbox fired up in quite a while.

This game encourages reckless driving, by filling up your "boost meter" based on things like driving toward oncoming traffic, skidding around corners, becoming airborne, and barely squeezing past other vehicles. When your boost meter is full, and you hit the boost, you are treated to a nitro-fueled, glued-to-the-back-of-your-seat, blast-off. The camera field of view changes causing the road to stretch out a la "The Fast and the Furious" and the high-speed traffic-dodging becomes even more intense. If you have the guts to continuously apply the boost until the meter is drained, you have performed a "Burnout" and you are rewarded with points and a partially filled meter, making it easier to refill it and experience the rush again.

The much talked-about "Crash" mode is super-entertaining. The point is to launch your car into an intersection, smashing as many vehicles and causing as much damage as possible. At this point, the physics engine really shows its stuff as you are treated to a slow-motion, multi-camera-angle show of all the most spectacular points of impact. You can get lucky and cause the required amount of damage first try, or you may have to try several times to find just the right angle and speed to create most havoc and earn that gold medal. In these cases, it can almost seem like a puzzle game. The Xbox version has 15 extra "Crash" levels compared to the PS2 version.

As for the racing, it seems to be just the right amount of a challenge. Most races I was able to get first or second place on the first try, but the way the "unlocking" mechanism works, I sometimes had to try a tournament again to get all gold medals, so I could acquire the next car or track. More challenging than the races was the "Pursuit" mode, where you drive a police car and bash your quarry into submission before they get past the county line. 

My one concern is that the overall game might be a bit short. Though we only played it maybe 4 evenings total, I think we may have unlocked 3/4 or so of all the cars and tracks. While certainly it will be fun to play through the same tracks and tournaments again, and the "Crash" mode can give you hours of enjoyment, I have trouble whole-heartedly recommending this for purchase. Definitely rent it, and If you can get it on sale or used, do purchase it.

Scoring note: This game is definitely funner than the more-serious Rallisport Challenge, but even with maxing out the "Reviewer's Tilt", I couldn't get the score higher than that game's 8.6. But looking over the score again, I decided to bump up the Graphics score from an 8 to a 9. This game may not look as realistic as Rallisport Challenge, but when I consider the amazing sense of speed it provides, it makes sense to give the graphics credit for that. Either way, this game is a case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

Finally worth buying. Finding this used on Ebay for $16 made it finally worth owning. Having rented it before, we knew exactly what we were getting: A rehash of the original and excellent Dreamcast classic, Crazy Taxi (including the original "West Coast" map), along with the not-so-great "improvements" of Crazy Taxi 2, namely the Crazy Hop and the lackluster "Small Apple" map. The playable characters get more annoying with each new version of the game, but they can be ignored for the most part. The new Las Vegas-inspired "Glitter Oasis" map is also the worst yet, with a disconcerting frame-rate jerkiness appearing too frequently, and the new soundtrack music is almost intolerable. So, why did I buy it even though I had previously rented it and knew all these problems in advance? Well, even with the mentioned problems, it's still just plain fun. Honestly, at the prices you can get it for now, it is worth it just to play on the original map without having to dust off the old Dreamcast. The Crazy-X mode is also fun, but frustrating. By the way, the Crazy Hop has grown on me somewhat after I got used to it. It's hard to complain about such a function being "unrealistic" in a game as crazy as Crazy Taxi. :)

I can't let my shortcomings with the controller take away from how good I think the game is. I think it is the best of the series and it is definitely worth picking up now that its price has dropped to $20 new.