XG3 Extreme G Racing
The third time is DEFINITELY the charm in Acclaim's futuristic bike racer.
Published: September 20, 2001
I've struggled for a while to figure out how to start this review. Maybe I'm still in shock from seeing what a difference a system leap can do to a series. Maybe I'm still stunned that the game is not only a great entry into the genre, but until we see what WipEout Fusion can offer, it's the best futuristic racing game available on the PS2.
See, in the beginning, there was Extreme-G on the N64. Like plenty of N64 games, it had promise, but was pretty much rammed into the ground by blurry graphics, a nauseating framerate, and a camera that did more to hurt the game than help. Extreme-G and it's sequel took the idea of racing on flat ground and warped it - quite literally - into a racing game that sent you flying around corners and down straightaways at all inclines. But, with the limited power of the system it was on, the series never really was able to deliver the punch that the developers' vision yearned for.
Enter the PS2. With the jump up to 128-bit power, suddenly the developers had free rein to design in a way that would really flesh out the world of Extreme-G, really show off not just the tracks and riders, but the environments they raced in. With all the shakeups at Acclaim, it's entirely possible that the assembled group at Acclaim Studios Cheltenham could have dropped the ball, and not many would have blamed them in light of all the industry chaos. Not only did the team hang onto the ball, but they dribbled it down court, rose high into the air and tomahawk-jammed it down the supped-up pipeline of the PS2.
The XG series always aspired to be a lightning-fast racing experience, and in most respects, even on the N64, it was. The problem was, unless you put in many, many, MANY hours of play time, the controls would usually leave you screaming explicatives that would make a drunken sailor blush. In almost all respects, the third racer in the series has moved past those issues and instead offers an insanely fast, tightly-controlled blast of a racing game. XG3's tracks are wide and open, offering plenty of maneuvering room, though as you'll soon discover, your bike quickly covers a lot of ground at 500MPH. When your first start out, your bike can go plenty fast, but it's the later races that will test your ability to handle the same seemingly simple curve that was a piece of cake when you topped out at around 400MPH, but suddenly feels a whole lot sharper when you tack on another hundred or two miles an hour.
While the ubiquitous Time Trial and Arcade Modes will let you zip around the tracks in a somewhat less competitive way, and in the case of the Time Trials, earn a few extra credits while you're at it, the meat of the game lies in the Career Mode. The action is broken up into four speed classes (250G, 500G, 750G and 1000G) and four leagues (Lithium, Rubidium, Caesium, and Francium) among them, each heaping on more speed and challenges that the previous races. You're free to pick from six different teams, and either of the racers in that team. The bikes handle more or less the same, but the way the energy and weapons are divvied out is interesting. While the bikes are equipped with the standard weapons (more on those later), boost and shields, but there's an element of strategy for boost use. Since the boost is directly tied into the shields, using excessive amounts leaves you open to attack, and using too much could leave you open to a one- or two-hit kill. Once you've died, you're out of the race and washed out of the league. You can continue, but you'll be back to where you started when you first made it into the speed class - including your bike loadout and cash.
Along the way, you'll be able to dip into each of the races individually (though in order), and then pop out to use your earnings to upgrade your bike. There's a basic engine upgrade that'll give you more speed, and a bevy of weapons, from missiles to better cannons to a rail gun to improvements to your shields and weapons, both in their capacity and how well they absorb refills. Because you're usually forced to upgrade one piece at a time, a little strategy comes into how you buy your add-ons. Do you supe up your engine or drop some of that cash into a more powerful weapon? Do you upgrade your shields or invest in a speed boost? It's this balance that keeps things interesting, and allows a small amount of customization depending on your play style.
The aforementioned leagues do more than separate higher cash purses for the races, they're also your key to opening up more tracks. With each new league, you'll gain more cash, more speed, and unlock a track or two along the way. By the time you've raced your way into the Francium league, you'll have unlocked 10 varied and gorgeous tracks, which you're more than welcome to race until blue in the face in the Arcade Mode. By unlocking the tracks slowly, you're given the opportunity to get used to the tracks various corners and corkscrews, and where the shield/ammo pit lanes are. That way, when you're dropped into the next league, and the subsequent faster bike, you're less apt to spend as much time glued to the walls.
It's obvious that the developers had a great time thinking up the different locales and track designs. The tracks themselves are amazing, and rife with corkscrews, full loops, sharp bends and gentle grades. The same track can see elevation changes along the way in the hundreds of feet, and thanks to a fantastic camera that intelligently pulls back or tucks in as you race without ever hindering the racing experience, you'll instantly feel every corner. I had to fight to keep from leaning back as I went around the first full loop in Siris Canyon. The camera works that well. Of course track design is the meat of the gameplay, but if you were racing around in a stale, lifeless world, it wouldn't really mean much. Sure, most of the time you're glued to the track, but every once in a while, a straightaway will allow a short peek at the surroundings.
And what pretty digs they are. Each track offers a unique, complete feel, whether it's Pion 6's Egyptian motif (complete with pyramids and giant statues) or Pasiphae 6's sweeping path along a huge dam or through a dense forest, every track feels completely original and unrelated. It's easy to feel like the races are taking place on different planets, and only serves to complete the feel that you're racing with machines that have been built a couple of centuries into the future. The textures are gorgeously high-res and varied, and considering the load times (roughly 5 seconds at most) per level, it's amazing what they've packed into the levels. Each track has a definite color scheme, so Muon Harbor's deep purples and blacks permeate every facet of the course, from the lit-up suspension bridge to the hunks of colored lighting that are smeared all over the tracks, are going to be different than Oceania's decidedly Topaz look.
If this all ran along at a locked-down 60fps, that would be one thing. After all, the sensation of speed only works if the game is running at a buttah-smooth framerate. For the most part, XG3 kicks out monstrously pretty lighting and polygons slathered with high-res textures, but every once in a while, the engine lets out a burp, and not that quiet little "yerp" that that cute girl in your English class sometimes squeaks out, I mean a "RRRAAARRRLLLLPPP" that makes your cringe - if only a little. The biggest problem isn't necessarily the slowdown, it's the fact that the engine drops into a low-res mode that makes everything look all jaggie-filled and scary (a la NASCAR 2001). This is most apparent on the levels where the admittedly slick, but hardware intensive rain-on-the-camera-lens effect pops up. It's an awesome addition to the levels, and gives it that MGS2-style sense of immersion, but it does take away from the experience when accompanied with slowdown. Luckily, there's no noticeable pop-up on any of the tracks, though if I had the choice I'd take a little pop-up in favor of a solid 60 frames. Ah well, can't have everything I suppose.
XG3's sound is probably the worst part of the game, but that doesn't mean it'll ruin the experience for you. I was simultaneously jumping for joy and biting my nails (yes, I'm three fingers less now) when I heard that UK uber-assembly the Ministry of Sound was doing the music. After all, this is the group that houses such greats as Paul Oakenfold, Moby, and Orbital. Unfortunately, if any of those guys were going to be donating music for the game, it's a pretty sure bet that they'd be highlighted individually. Unfortunately, despite some slightly enjoyable sounds, the music largely falls flat, and at times (like, say, the entire friggin' menus), it can be downright annoying.
Luckily, if you can't take anymore and you decide to turn off the music, you'll find that there were some rather nice effects lying in wait behind that curtain of sound. The bikes' engines sound fast, and when you pour on the turbo, you can almost hear them begging to fly out of the chassis and head skyward. Weapons have the requisite pop and boom, and everything just sounds as it should. Nothing will have you freaking out at it's entrance, but you won't be wishing for anything in place of what you do hear, either.
It's an understatement to say XG3 is the best of the series. The other two games shouldn't even have existed if this is what the true vision of the designers has wrought. But, they do, and it's a perfect example of what the leap in power can do from one generation to the next. It's hard to say if XG3 will appeal to everyone, but it's definitely worth renting, and if you find yourself the least bit interested, maybe it's time to plunk down the cash to take a longer look.
See, in the beginning, there was Extreme-G on the N64. Like plenty of N64 games, it had promise, but was pretty much rammed into the ground by blurry graphics, a nauseating framerate, and a camera that did more to hurt the game than help. Extreme-G and it's sequel took the idea of racing on flat ground and warped it - quite literally - into a racing game that sent you flying around corners and down straightaways at all inclines. But, with the limited power of the system it was on, the series never really was able to deliver the punch that the developers' vision yearned for.
Enter the PS2. With the jump up to 128-bit power, suddenly the developers had free rein to design in a way that would really flesh out the world of Extreme-G, really show off not just the tracks and riders, but the environments they raced in. With all the shakeups at Acclaim, it's entirely possible that the assembled group at Acclaim Studios Cheltenham could have dropped the ball, and not many would have blamed them in light of all the industry chaos. Not only did the team hang onto the ball, but they dribbled it down court, rose high into the air and tomahawk-jammed it down the supped-up pipeline of the PS2.
The XG series always aspired to be a lightning-fast racing experience, and in most respects, even on the N64, it was. The problem was, unless you put in many, many, MANY hours of play time, the controls would usually leave you screaming explicatives that would make a drunken sailor blush. In almost all respects, the third racer in the series has moved past those issues and instead offers an insanely fast, tightly-controlled blast of a racing game. XG3's tracks are wide and open, offering plenty of maneuvering room, though as you'll soon discover, your bike quickly covers a lot of ground at 500MPH. When your first start out, your bike can go plenty fast, but it's the later races that will test your ability to handle the same seemingly simple curve that was a piece of cake when you topped out at around 400MPH, but suddenly feels a whole lot sharper when you tack on another hundred or two miles an hour.
While the ubiquitous Time Trial and Arcade Modes will let you zip around the tracks in a somewhat less competitive way, and in the case of the Time Trials, earn a few extra credits while you're at it, the meat of the game lies in the Career Mode. The action is broken up into four speed classes (250G, 500G, 750G and 1000G) and four leagues (Lithium, Rubidium, Caesium, and Francium) among them, each heaping on more speed and challenges that the previous races. You're free to pick from six different teams, and either of the racers in that team. The bikes handle more or less the same, but the way the energy and weapons are divvied out is interesting. While the bikes are equipped with the standard weapons (more on those later), boost and shields, but there's an element of strategy for boost use. Since the boost is directly tied into the shields, using excessive amounts leaves you open to attack, and using too much could leave you open to a one- or two-hit kill. Once you've died, you're out of the race and washed out of the league. You can continue, but you'll be back to where you started when you first made it into the speed class - including your bike loadout and cash.
Along the way, you'll be able to dip into each of the races individually (though in order), and then pop out to use your earnings to upgrade your bike. There's a basic engine upgrade that'll give you more speed, and a bevy of weapons, from missiles to better cannons to a rail gun to improvements to your shields and weapons, both in their capacity and how well they absorb refills. Because you're usually forced to upgrade one piece at a time, a little strategy comes into how you buy your add-ons. Do you supe up your engine or drop some of that cash into a more powerful weapon? Do you upgrade your shields or invest in a speed boost? It's this balance that keeps things interesting, and allows a small amount of customization depending on your play style.
The aforementioned leagues do more than separate higher cash purses for the races, they're also your key to opening up more tracks. With each new league, you'll gain more cash, more speed, and unlock a track or two along the way. By the time you've raced your way into the Francium league, you'll have unlocked 10 varied and gorgeous tracks, which you're more than welcome to race until blue in the face in the Arcade Mode. By unlocking the tracks slowly, you're given the opportunity to get used to the tracks various corners and corkscrews, and where the shield/ammo pit lanes are. That way, when you're dropped into the next league, and the subsequent faster bike, you're less apt to spend as much time glued to the walls.
It's obvious that the developers had a great time thinking up the different locales and track designs. The tracks themselves are amazing, and rife with corkscrews, full loops, sharp bends and gentle grades. The same track can see elevation changes along the way in the hundreds of feet, and thanks to a fantastic camera that intelligently pulls back or tucks in as you race without ever hindering the racing experience, you'll instantly feel every corner. I had to fight to keep from leaning back as I went around the first full loop in Siris Canyon. The camera works that well. Of course track design is the meat of the gameplay, but if you were racing around in a stale, lifeless world, it wouldn't really mean much. Sure, most of the time you're glued to the track, but every once in a while, a straightaway will allow a short peek at the surroundings.
And what pretty digs they are. Each track offers a unique, complete feel, whether it's Pion 6's Egyptian motif (complete with pyramids and giant statues) or Pasiphae 6's sweeping path along a huge dam or through a dense forest, every track feels completely original and unrelated. It's easy to feel like the races are taking place on different planets, and only serves to complete the feel that you're racing with machines that have been built a couple of centuries into the future. The textures are gorgeously high-res and varied, and considering the load times (roughly 5 seconds at most) per level, it's amazing what they've packed into the levels. Each track has a definite color scheme, so Muon Harbor's deep purples and blacks permeate every facet of the course, from the lit-up suspension bridge to the hunks of colored lighting that are smeared all over the tracks, are going to be different than Oceania's decidedly Topaz look.
If this all ran along at a locked-down 60fps, that would be one thing. After all, the sensation of speed only works if the game is running at a buttah-smooth framerate. For the most part, XG3 kicks out monstrously pretty lighting and polygons slathered with high-res textures, but every once in a while, the engine lets out a burp, and not that quiet little "yerp" that that cute girl in your English class sometimes squeaks out, I mean a "RRRAAARRRLLLLPPP" that makes your cringe - if only a little. The biggest problem isn't necessarily the slowdown, it's the fact that the engine drops into a low-res mode that makes everything look all jaggie-filled and scary (a la NASCAR 2001). This is most apparent on the levels where the admittedly slick, but hardware intensive rain-on-the-camera-lens effect pops up. It's an awesome addition to the levels, and gives it that MGS2-style sense of immersion, but it does take away from the experience when accompanied with slowdown. Luckily, there's no noticeable pop-up on any of the tracks, though if I had the choice I'd take a little pop-up in favor of a solid 60 frames. Ah well, can't have everything I suppose.
XG3's sound is probably the worst part of the game, but that doesn't mean it'll ruin the experience for you. I was simultaneously jumping for joy and biting my nails (yes, I'm three fingers less now) when I heard that UK uber-assembly the Ministry of Sound was doing the music. After all, this is the group that houses such greats as Paul Oakenfold, Moby, and Orbital. Unfortunately, if any of those guys were going to be donating music for the game, it's a pretty sure bet that they'd be highlighted individually. Unfortunately, despite some slightly enjoyable sounds, the music largely falls flat, and at times (like, say, the entire friggin' menus), it can be downright annoying.
Luckily, if you can't take anymore and you decide to turn off the music, you'll find that there were some rather nice effects lying in wait behind that curtain of sound. The bikes' engines sound fast, and when you pour on the turbo, you can almost hear them begging to fly out of the chassis and head skyward. Weapons have the requisite pop and boom, and everything just sounds as it should. Nothing will have you freaking out at it's entrance, but you won't be wishing for anything in place of what you do hear, either.
It's an understatement to say XG3 is the best of the series. The other two games shouldn't even have existed if this is what the true vision of the designers has wrought. But, they do, and it's a perfect example of what the leap in power can do from one generation to the next. It's hard to say if XG3 will appeal to everyone, but it's definitely worth renting, and if you find yourself the least bit interested, maybe it's time to plunk down the cash to take a longer look.
