Smashing Drive

Do arcade racing games make good console titles? As Smashing Drive shows, not always.

A port of the arcade game, Smashing Drive tries to add a few twists to the standard Crazy Taxi formula. You play a cabdriver trying to make it through four shifts, bashing cars and doing whatever is necessary to reach the finish line before your opponent. Helping you out along the way are power-ups that transform your vehicle and shortcuts through sewer pipes and shopping malls that save you precious seconds.

The trouble is that, unlike in Crazy Taxi, there?s very little to actually do. Sure, there are a fair amount of graphical gimmicks (you can bash through basketball arenas and up a skyscraper), but nowhere near enough. You can see everything the game has to offer in an hour or two, and similarly, the two-player split-screen mode gets boring very quickly.

Control is also somewhat uneven. Your cab handles very strangely, and often you?ll find yourself propelled into the air after hitting a car or wall for no apparent reason. The graphics run at a fast, steady frame rate but are extremely blocky, and the music is equally uninspiring. In fact, there really isn?t anything in Smashing Drive that couldn?t have been done on a Nintendo 64 two years ago.

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