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L.A. Rush
In a hybrid type of pimp my ride kind of
way comes LA Rush backed by the West Coast Customs name. I immediately
thought of West Coast Choppers when I heard about the association
however I digress. This is an adventure tale where you get to ahem, pimp
your ride J
The
story is fairly bog standard with you trying to right the wrongs against
you and build up your street rep and earn money by racing. To its
credit, the games sense of scope and scale is huge, with sprawling
cityscape to make your way through at blistering speeds. There is also
tons of traffic to make your way through (or not!) and crashes abound
through the title.
For
those of you sort of hoping to interact with the modding side of the
car, forget about doing that now. You get your ride to West Coast and
they look after the rest, no player interaction allowed sorry. You even
get the Pimp My Ride theme thrown in for kicks!
Your
character’s name in the storyline is Trikz, a wealthy street racer who
has all his cars stolen and is on a quest to get them all back. You are
on a mission now and have to race and win money to get into street
races.
One of
the main things that annoyed me was the progression structure to the
game where you need to buy your way into a race. As long as you don’t
place last, all is good but if you do for whatever fickle reason the
slightly inadequate AI gives you, you’ve lost your money and need to
buy in again, which means you have to go earn money by participating in
the cheaper races then going back to where you were. It’s a fair bit of
backtracking that just ticked me off.
A
credit to the title is the fact that there are real licensed cars in
this game, a fact that sets it apart from other racers, and yes you can
damage them. I think this is a credit to both manufacturer and developer
and a real failing on the part of games like Gran Turismo. I mean let’s
face it; wouldn’t you love to trash a virtual luxury car? I know that I
would.
All
things said and done L.A. Rush is a nice looking game that doesn’t stand
out too much from the crowd of racers in the market. There are some
great moments in it and the city itself is a living breathing entity.
The game’s AI is a bit dodgy and the progression structure takes some
patience.
The
soundtrack is a good mix of genres but never does enough to make itself
stand out from other titles that are similar. It’s a solid enough game
but not enough to scream out for you to buy it. With a launch price of
$79.95, it might even be worth waiting for it to drop in price. The
game may be a bit better on XBox, however it appears to be the actual
game mechanics that are throwing it a bit with the rubberband AI. We’ll
try and find out for you in the weeks to come.
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