Developer
Beyond Games

Released: November 12, 2002
Genre: Racing
Players: 2
ESRB: Everyone

4
5
5
6
4.8

Supported Features:

Unfortunately, my legendary car collection was lost in the shadows of my childhood, replaced by a crack-like addiction with computers and video games that has stuck with me for nearly twenty years. Even so, when Hot Wheels: Velocity X came across my desk for review I couldn’t help the urge to relive that small part of my childhood, and this is going to be the big draw for this game.

Suffice to say there isn’t a shortage of driving games on the PS2 or any other gaming system for that matter. So when THQ announced this newest title my enthusiasm was tempered with a bit of trepidation as to how it would actually compete with all of those PS2 racers.

Hot Wheels: Velocity X features:

• More than 45 authentic 3D rendered Hot Wheels cars to unlock and drive
• Take the wheel on 30 treacherous missions in 6 huge levels of a destructible 3D Hot Wheels world
• Do whatever it takes to crush your rivals and complete the mission - speed through huge loops, catch big air off a jump, find hidden short cuts or run them off the road
• Blow the enemy away with more than 15 offensive and defensive power-ups
• Challenge a friend in one of three different multiplayer modes: Head to Head racing, Hot Wheels Battle Mode and Stunt Challenge

The Adventure mode is the big draw for this title and will probably be the first thing you tackle. You progress through 30 levels, each with a unique set of goals that must be completed before you advance to the next. These goals are pretty simple for the most part consisting of a lot of checkpoint racing against the clock, some racing against other cars, item collection, and the occasional escort/protect missions.

The Challenge mode is setup like your typical Tony Hawk game. You are given a laundry list of challenges like performing stunts, beating a checkpoint time limit, or collecting x-many items, within a certain amount of time. Beating these challenges earns you new cars and tracks for the Joyride and two-player games.

There is a fairly elaborate trick system in place that brought back fond memories of my Rumble Racing days. You can do all sorts of jumps, flips, barrel rolls, and drive through high-G loops and high-bank turns. You can execute all sorts of in-air tricks using a combination of the L1, R1 and left stick. As fun as the trick system is, it manages to get boring after only a few missions. You can only catch so much air and there are only so many combinations of rolls and flips you can do before you have exhausted the trick library. After all, this is a car; not a snowboard.

Thankfully, the creative track designs help liven up the short-lived stunt experience. In addition to the traditional ramps and loops that we had growing up with the real cars, we now get levels that resemble oversized skate parks with half-pipes and vertical walls. The designers have taken care to place many of the pick-ups in the hardest-to-reach places so you will be continually challenged to explore every inch of each level.

Racing and stunts are only part of the Hot Wheels experience. You can also engage in combat, either using your car as a ramming weapon or using any of several destructive gadgets you can collect along the way. These range from the forward-firing lasers, blasters, and rockets to area-effect pulse weapons that are easier to use since they don’t require you to aim.

Even with all of this content a racing game is only as good as its controls, and this is where Velocity X spins out of control and runs off the road. There is no attempt for realistic controls, but that is okay, as this game never claims to be anything more than a pure arcade racing experience. Even so, the control for these cars is destructive to both the gamers’ mental health and the overall enjoyment of this title.

Regardless of the car you are driving, the steering is very unresponsive making it impossible to navigate many of the trickier sections of several levels. Missions that require a lot of right-angle turns are nearly impossible as the handbrake is all but useless in performing any type of tight turns or 180-reversals. When you do finally manage to execute a power slide you have lost most all of your initial speed, so you end up making a turn right out of Driver’s Ed. As bad as these cars handle during normal driving, it only gets worse when you start trying to do vertical U-turns or trying to tweak your steering while driving up through a loop. What little handling you did have just flew out the window.

To make matters even worse, the cars have some kind of auto-correcting mechanism that will counter steer to correct a sliding turn. Much like Bruce Willis in Die Hard 3, I wanted to crawl under the dash and rip out all the wires restricting my freedom of dangerous driving.

Unfortunately, this poor control affects the overall enjoyment of the game. You will end up fighting the control system in order to accomplish many of the mission goals. It’s nearly impossible to line-up a weapon’s shot on another car, so you end up using the area-effect weapons more than you probably should. The missions and various objectives are quite challenging in their own right, and overcoming poor handling is just one obstacle that I didn’t need.

The car models are quite nice and resemble traditional Hot Wheels designs. Despite their unique designs, the cars are textured with some simple one-color texture maps that offer only a bit of reflective quality. They still maintain a flat, dull finish that fails to pop them off the darker backgrounds.

Despite all of the creative parts used to assemble many of the levels, their overall design can get pretty boring, mainly due to the limited texture library that creates a repetitive sense of “been there – seen that”. The only good thing about this is that the levels are huge, taking several minutes to drive from one end to the other, and there is so discernable pop-up. Of course, the downside to these huge levels is the framerate, which isn’t nearly as fast as it should be for this quality of graphics.

There are several “problem areas” you will quickly come to learn and memorize about each level. Entering these areas will give you a consistent dip in framerate, but there are numerous occasions where the framerate will take a substantial hit for no apparent reason, and it won’t happen every time making it that much more frustrating. When the framerate drops you lose nearly all of what little control you had over these cars in the first place.

The waypoint arrow is another major complaint I have with this title. I’m used to the triangular shaped arrows that are impossible to tell which way they are pointing, but this one actually points you in the wrong direction. Use with caution and more as a generic directional finder than a pointer.

The camera also has some serious issues, but most of these are during stunts or while driving vertically up loops or walls. The camera shifts to a very “unfriendly” angle, making it impossible to see where you are going. This makes it hard to collect those pick-ups stuck on the walls unless you are good about lining up your trajectory prior to the camera shift.

Weapon effects are varied but not all that inventive, and the crashing noises are the same whether you smack the wall at 20mph or tumble six times and bounce off the wall at 200mph. It all gets fairly repetitive really fast, but nothing will wear on your nerves like the sound effect used when navigating the menus. Imagine the sound of a mechanic removing a lug nut from your wheel with an air-ratchet each time you click through the menus.

Die-hard racers can probably exhaust this game or their patience in a normal rental period. Don’t even consider a purchase until this hits the bargain bins, and even then make sure your current health plan covers anger management classes.

I was sorely disappointed that there wasn’t a track editor. As any Hot Wheels kid will tell you, most of the fun is putting those pieces of track together with loops and turns to create unlimited racing and stunt experiences. Even the most basic of track editors would have given this game so much more added value.