London Racer

The Good
It is a lot of fun. Blasting round places I see every day, in cars I see every day has a certain appeal, but this game has no real substance. There are some good points...

The handling of the cars, although not realistic is at least better than some (on a par with Need For Speed, perhaps). The sounds are nothing special, but they're certainly not bad. The graphics are pretty slick and stand up to some fairly close examination. All in all it's fairly competent, just not outstanding in anyway.

The car modelling is quite reasonable. The driver's cars all look pretty close to the real things, and most of the other traffic - London buses, black cabs, white Mercedes vans, police Astras, etc. - are modelled quite well, although from the rear the cabs look alot like Mk II Escort estates (which will mean nothing if you don't know what a Mk II Escort estate looks like!)

The tracks are... interesting, to say the least. While obviously inaccurate, they at least give a flavour of London. Everything is in the right places, and looks pretty good, but the roads between the various landmarks have been exaggerated - widened and lengthened. I guess this was done to make the game more playable. However, the country route is way off. You'd never get to see Stonehenge, Avebury and the White Horse in one minute... although it does give you something to look at.

The best feature of the game is the fact that you get awarded money for knocking down Gatsos (speed cameras). Any self-respecting Brit driving this game will get a real kick out of this, but I'm not sure if it means anything to anyone else.

The Bad
It's far too easy. Even without trying too hard it's possible to complete this game in a couple of hours. That alone means it really isn't worth paying too much for it. When you first start the game it actually comes as a great disappointment to find that the tracks are simplistic exaggerations, and you wonder why they couldn't be bothered to get it right. Also the roads are scarily underpopulated. I have never seen these roads this empty, not even at 3 in the morning.

The Bottom Line
Got a spare evening? A few hours will do. That's all it will take to finish this game. When I bought this game, it was already priced at budget levels which is just as well, because that's all its worth.

This game is fun. That's about it. It's not realistic, it's not difficult, it's just fun, though I would be surprised if this game appeals to anyone outside the UK.