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Speed Kings Review - Gamecube

With a recent car racing background, Acclaim has had more than a huge success and fan-base for their racing games such as the popular Burnout series. Unfortunately, as most people would know by now, the Burnout series now belongs to EA whom have had a huge success with the popular Need for Speed series. It now seems that Acclaim have offered their fans an alternative racer swapping cars for motor bikes. While you may not feel the wind in your hair, this does see an attempt of a new franchise for Acclaim.

Gameplay

As soon as you load Speed Kings, you'll discover the usual modes that you would have come to expect, but the mode you should check out first is the License mode. It gives you a brief, yet well designed introduction to the different stunts and tricks you can perform during races by explaining how to master the stunts and even gives you challenges to try the stunts. However, there is a minor flaw in this part of the License mode because it will say what to do but will lack telling you the buttons to press. Luckily, if you look in the instruction booklet, it will all be cleared up for you but it is still annoying that Acclaim couldn't say things like 'hold trick' meant hold the L button. Ignoring this fact, you will come across various tasks that you must complete in order to master tricks such as performing a handstand or wheelie. The stunts actually act as a means of obtaining Powerband points which, in turn, will give you an option of having a boost of speed once your Powerband meter is full. Unfortunately, when you do use your speed boost, you'll find a cool blur effect around your screen making it seem you're going fast but your opponents are somehow still able to keep up with you sometimes, and you can barely see anything in front of you, often causing you to crash.

Single Player mode offers you a series of different modes which are all very similar in terms of the overall gameplay. The modes include:

• Single Race: where you verse five computer controlled players in a three lap single race on a chosen race corse;
• Meets: where you race in meets which are mini tournaments. In each different meet there are three different races and depending on your position when you finish each race, you are rewarded points and providing you have enough, you can unlock the next meet as well as different race courses for Single Race mode;
• Time Attack: where your opponents and traffic are taken away from the track and you are left to race against the clock;
• Trick Attack: where you are given a set amount of tricks to perform in a certain time limit;
• Head to Head: where you race against only one CPU;
• Grand Prix: where you choose between four different amounts of races to compete in with a few more CPUs.

One thing that ... (continued next page)