So after finally coming down after the sweet gaming high provided by Burnout 2 I was expecting Speed Kings to simply be the 2-wheeled version of god's gift to earth. Sadly, the only Speed that kicks in with these Kings is how fast you trade it off to someone.
The premise is the usual racing flair. You have to place first in all these races and make sure you are theMacDaddy of ninja cycles and crotch rockets. During your journey to the top, you'll also have to perform Tony Hawk inspired Move Checklists as well as deal with other 'inspired ideas' that were implemented.
After the visual bliss of Burnout 2, it pains me to write that SK takes huge leaps backwards, leaping all the way back to launch day sights. Levels are void of any sort of life, details are thin and far between, and what is there has already been done to death before in every other racer out there. The AI traffic is very robotic, very rigid, and very unrealistic. You'll see the same vehicle patterns in the same locations all the time, with (at most) maybe 5 different models in total. If you were to believe Acclaim, only trucks with boat trailers, trucks with cranes, and delivery trucks drive around town. If you're looking for bragging rights over your Game Cube and PS2 owners, your only claim to fame is better graphics than the PS2 version. The Game Cube has the better resolution.
When you do hit cars, they bend and dent slightly, but nothing even close to being inspiring. On the flip side, your bike goes 'kaboom' quiet nicely, with specs of debris and flying tires abound. Tragically there's not much in terms of variety to the crashes either. Once you've hit the pavement three times, you'll know what to expect and when.
You can customize your rider to a small degree, changing your helmet, bike, and crash suit colors as well as your name, but where are the customs? If I want to slap a big old GameShark logo on my chest I should be able to.
As mentioned earlier, there are a lot of borrowed ideas used in SK. You get to race against traffic (Burnout), you need to perform various tricks (Tony Hawk), punching the opponents are encouraged (Road Rash), and you have to damn near unlock everything (Vanishing Point). You earn Respect Points along the way, which can be spent on the game's hidden bikes. Not really drooling yet are we?
Sadly, there's not much else to write home about in the other areas of the game. Audio is fairly basic, as if they used some $1.99 filler CD rather than actually trying something. The bikes themselves sound about as realistic as me selling off my game collection. Oddball whirs, ear piercing shrieks, and miscued screeches are par for the course. In game traffic doesn't do much to help either. In fact, they don't do much at all. I ended up turning off the game music and turning on my radio.
Control is somewhat off par as well. You have access to the front and rear brakes, gas, and of course tricks. Trying to actually get your virtual self to DO a damn trick is a trick in itself. Compound this problem with an unloving set of predetermined trick locations, stupid on-screen messages like, "Threw Bike Up the Road", and an overall lack of adrenaline rushes, and you have yet another toss away title for the Xbox.
Speed Kings is a perfect example of what happens when you try to follow inspiration yet forget to bring your own intuition and imagination.
