[Mini-Review] Ford Bold Moves Street Racing
Razorworks' budget racer proves that you get what you pay for.
Published: October 9, 2006
[The Good]
Budget titles have earned themselves a bad reputation for being shallow, truncated experiences that barely -- if ever -- justify even the entry price. There are exceptions, of course, but most of these are games that were built to be full-price offerings but were wisely launched at a budget price. Games like Katamari Damacy or the 2K Sports titles have proven that a $20 price point isn't necessarily an indication of a game's immediate value.
Then there are games like Ford Bold Moves Street Racing (the title of which is mercifully shortened in the game's native UK to remove Ford's whole "Bold Moves" ad campaign) which certainly looks better than your typical budget title, but ultimately provides about as much depth as you'd expect from a game designed to be sold to the Wal-Mart crowd at minimal cost.
The core of the game is built around a crew of up to four cars that race around impressively modeled LA street courses. Since you can only control a single car at a time, it falls to the game's AI to pick up the slack, and for the most part it does a fairly nice job of filling in for you until you can hot swap to one of the other cars -- at least in the first couple races. To help even things out, you can issue simple orders to your teammates, asking them to block cars while you work your way toward the head of the pack. To ease this process and help lagging racers shoot forward, you can slipstream behind your teammates and then allow them to do the same.
This whole process of leapfrogging and blocking your way up the pack is actually pulled off rather well, though later races in the game can make this whole process rather difficult. Part of this stems from the fact that the game's sense of speed can be a little deceiving; slamming into a wall and dropping back a few spots is all too common -- particularly in the high performance cars, but at least it does give the game a chance to show off the damage model, which allows for not just scrapes and busted lights but actual deformation that can affect vehicle handling, a nice touch.
In the game's Team Racing Mode, the money won after races can be used to repair that damage, and buy some of the game's more advanced cars. It's a minor feeling of progression given that there are only 18 cars to choose from, but it's at least something. Challenges add an addictive (if difficult) set of goals like overtaking a set number of cars, logging a solid lap time or just winning races, and this is probably the most enjoyable way to earn bonus cash.
[The Bad]
There's really no way around it, though: the AI and sense of speed -- two things that all racing games should have down pat -- hurt the overall experience and rob the game of any longevity that it could have had. It's a puzzling dichotomy; the AI for your own teammates is utterly incapable of holding the lead that you repeatedly give them, yet the non-team racers are all too good at using rubber band (sorry, "slipstreaming") and ultra-aggressive moves to keep you from passing them.
As you get into the game, blocks get more difficult, and the game's thankfully forgiving points system means you won't have to occupy all the top spots, but that doesn't mean you won't have to fight for it all the time. The game initially seems fairly deep, letting you jump into a Quick Race or the deeper Team Racing, but you'll find that the Quick Races (albeit with more options) are duplicated in Team Racing and Solo Racing and the Challenges basically repeat the things you'll do in Team Racing over the course of the Team Championship anyway.
That's a minor gripe, though, the real bitching is reserved for the fact that there's almost no real sense of speed in place here. Tearing around an approximated PCH in the GT500 should feel like you could tear free from the fabric of reality with all that power, not help you into a track's walls (invisible and otherwise) when you try to take a corner at what seems like a modest speed. Because of this, cars just feel more or less squirrelly rather than feeling independent of each other. There is a difference between, say, a classic fastback Mustang and that aforementioned GT500, but not enough that you feel rewarded for unlocking new cars.
[The Verdict]
Despite some very nice modeling, courses that feel both vibrant and pulled from some sort of Bizarro Los Angeles where the streets are pristine, and a great framerate, FBMSR simply feels like a game that should only set you back a single Andrew Jackson. AI that does more to lose the race for you than keep you in the lead, a painfully small number of cars, a sense of speed that falls well short of making you feel like you're behind the wheel of some of Detroit's more powerful machines, and redundant race types just leave the game lacking.
Budget titles have earned themselves a bad reputation for being shallow, truncated experiences that barely -- if ever -- justify even the entry price. There are exceptions, of course, but most of these are games that were built to be full-price offerings but were wisely launched at a budget price. Games like Katamari Damacy or the 2K Sports titles have proven that a $20 price point isn't necessarily an indication of a game's immediate value.
Then there are games like Ford Bold Moves Street Racing (the title of which is mercifully shortened in the game's native UK to remove Ford's whole "Bold Moves" ad campaign) which certainly looks better than your typical budget title, but ultimately provides about as much depth as you'd expect from a game designed to be sold to the Wal-Mart crowd at minimal cost.
The core of the game is built around a crew of up to four cars that race around impressively modeled LA street courses. Since you can only control a single car at a time, it falls to the game's AI to pick up the slack, and for the most part it does a fairly nice job of filling in for you until you can hot swap to one of the other cars -- at least in the first couple races. To help even things out, you can issue simple orders to your teammates, asking them to block cars while you work your way toward the head of the pack. To ease this process and help lagging racers shoot forward, you can slipstream behind your teammates and then allow them to do the same.
This whole process of leapfrogging and blocking your way up the pack is actually pulled off rather well, though later races in the game can make this whole process rather difficult. Part of this stems from the fact that the game's sense of speed can be a little deceiving; slamming into a wall and dropping back a few spots is all too common -- particularly in the high performance cars, but at least it does give the game a chance to show off the damage model, which allows for not just scrapes and busted lights but actual deformation that can affect vehicle handling, a nice touch.
In the game's Team Racing Mode, the money won after races can be used to repair that damage, and buy some of the game's more advanced cars. It's a minor feeling of progression given that there are only 18 cars to choose from, but it's at least something. Challenges add an addictive (if difficult) set of goals like overtaking a set number of cars, logging a solid lap time or just winning races, and this is probably the most enjoyable way to earn bonus cash.
[The Bad]
There's really no way around it, though: the AI and sense of speed -- two things that all racing games should have down pat -- hurt the overall experience and rob the game of any longevity that it could have had. It's a puzzling dichotomy; the AI for your own teammates is utterly incapable of holding the lead that you repeatedly give them, yet the non-team racers are all too good at using rubber band (sorry, "slipstreaming") and ultra-aggressive moves to keep you from passing them.
As you get into the game, blocks get more difficult, and the game's thankfully forgiving points system means you won't have to occupy all the top spots, but that doesn't mean you won't have to fight for it all the time. The game initially seems fairly deep, letting you jump into a Quick Race or the deeper Team Racing, but you'll find that the Quick Races (albeit with more options) are duplicated in Team Racing and Solo Racing and the Challenges basically repeat the things you'll do in Team Racing over the course of the Team Championship anyway.
That's a minor gripe, though, the real bitching is reserved for the fact that there's almost no real sense of speed in place here. Tearing around an approximated PCH in the GT500 should feel like you could tear free from the fabric of reality with all that power, not help you into a track's walls (invisible and otherwise) when you try to take a corner at what seems like a modest speed. Because of this, cars just feel more or less squirrelly rather than feeling independent of each other. There is a difference between, say, a classic fastback Mustang and that aforementioned GT500, but not enough that you feel rewarded for unlocking new cars.
[The Verdict]
Despite some very nice modeling, courses that feel both vibrant and pulled from some sort of Bizarro Los Angeles where the streets are pristine, and a great framerate, FBMSR simply feels like a game that should only set you back a single Andrew Jackson. AI that does more to lose the race for you than keep you in the lead, a painfully small number of cars, a sense of speed that falls well short of making you feel like you're behind the wheel of some of Detroit's more powerful machines, and redundant race types just leave the game lacking.
