Hot Wheels Stunt Track Challenge
First sign of the apocalypse: we get a decent Hot Wheels game. Be afraid...
Published: December 5, 2004
STC feels a bit like an Extreme G clone, with see-through floors and a regular tendency to mess with perspective and gravity. There are moments of influence from Psygnosis' Rollcage series too, where the cars become uber-clingy machines that can drive at any angle, but the addition of some environmental hazards and intelligently designed jumping challenges for the target-centric courses are a nice way to mix things up.
The game as a whole doesn't stray too far into the realm of subtlety. Most of the color schemes tend to rest comfortably in the primaries, with rich reds, yellows, blues and purples filling most of the screen on a lot of courses. It's not a bid decision, really, since the environments themselves are nicely detailed, though it's doubtful anyone playing will catch too much as things move along at a normally creamy framerate, and the sense of speed is more than enough for lead feet to get their fix.
The cutscenes aren't really necessary (the super-hip kid hosting the game's main Game Show mode is annoying in that in-your-face Saturday morning cartoon way, but I suppose it's fitting for the target audience), and they tend to chug quite a bit at times. The simplistic animation and nondescript fly-bys of the courses you're about to race on don't offer all that much info.
The audio is also rather plain. It's fair enough, and in particular the squealing tires sound quite nice, but the overly repetitive quips from the announcer/host get old real fast, and seem to be a combination of course location-specific comments and a few basic event-triggered lines. A couple times, I caught the game commenting on something that wasn't there, likely taken out toward the end of the dev cycle, but the audio was never cleaned up. Otherwise, there are a handful of growls, clicks and bubbles (and, for whatever reason, a weird spinning sound effect before you hit some jumps) add something for your ears to digest along with your eyes, but it's nothing of serious impact.
It's the core gameplay, the sense of speed and the varied and dare I say impressive course designs and environments that keep STC entertaining. Most experienced gamers will unlock everything (that being a special car, wheels that don't actually improve any stats, and some decals for the cars) and finish the game well ahead of the pack in a handful of hours, but the difficulty seems nicely tweaked to allow kids to try and retry some levels until they've done the same.
At $20, this is hardly an expensive way to give the kids in your life some entertainment. I would have liked to see a whole lot more depth to the trick system, but everything else is far above what's normally expected out of a value title. It's not a lengthy experience, nor is it especially complex as a racer, but for the price, it's enough to warrant a recommendation as a solid buy -- provided you have someone around that's the right age.
