Written By Shaun McCracken
Acclaim and Climax may have had good intentions when they decided to create
Speed Kings. Seeing how great Burnout 2 was, especially in it's fast-paced breakneck
arcade design, why not try to re-create that formula again, this time using motorcycles.
It looks like the two may have gotten ahead of themselves, because there's some
key features not in Speed Kings that made Burnout fun. It's a far from terrible
game, but when you look at the big picture when you're done with this, then looking
at Burnout 2, you realize that they missed quite a few elements.
The one thing we should get out of the way is that while Speed Kings is quite
similar to Burnout and Burnout 2, it's not done by the same developer. I've read
many people posting in those "reader reviews" saying that SK was done by the
Burnout developers. Nope, Criterion Games did Burnout, and Climax did this. Right
there should give you a reason why this game is a bit lacking. Even though Acclaim
was the publisher for both, each had a different developer. After playing this game,
I think Criterion could have done much better.
Okay, seeing how I've been saying that SK is similar to Burnout, lets see why.
Both feature fast, arcade paced racing. Both encourage dangerous driving. Both
have a boost feature. Both have some deatailed crashes (Burnout 2 does it better).
But that's where it ends. I think the only thing different between the two is the
type of vehicle you drive. Here, you drive on speed bikes, which you now have to
deal with a new handling scheme. Racing in SK is not as easy as it was in Burnout,
but not task-inducing. You will have to time your braking and turning much sooner
to get around corners. You can't just drift or slide through them. The boosting,
while somewhat similar in design, is not just as well implemented here as it was in Burnout 2.
In Burnout 2, you can link your boosts, or "Burnouts" to keep the speed going.
In SK, you can't, since your "Powerband" relies on stunts that need to be executed,
and it's a bit hard to do when you're speeding. Also, if you succeed in using
all of your boost without crashing, you don't get a refil (in Burnout 2, your meter
fills halfway, and with skillful driving during the boost, it will fill the rest of the
way for a whole new boost). That's also one of the other problems with the boost
system in this game. You can't get anything by driving on the wrong side of the
road or sliding, you need to do tricks. That's a bit tough to do when you hit an area
without much straight parts of road.
If it's not enough that Climax "borrowed" many elements from Burnout, they
also took something from ATV2, which was released five months before this game.
In SK, you can kick opponents off their bikes, which can fill up your boost meter
a little. But you may be doing it more often to starve off the AI, as they almost
ask to be knocked off when they approach you. Say if you're in first, then the AI
opponent in second tries to get ahead of you. He'll do that, but then it seems like
the opponent comes back to you. That's not the only weird AI oddity about the game.
The traffic, which you would think be out of the way, can be erratic. On one course,
there was one car that cut me off, then started sweving all over the road. What
the hell was that about? Finally, the games "events", such as rockslides or
a semi in the middle of the road, are scripted, not random. That means on the same course,
on the same lap and the same place, that one paticular event will happen. Why not
make it happen ranomly, so you don't expect it?
The visuals confuse me a bit here. Why is it that ATV2 had some fairly nice
graphics, textures and framerate, and here it's a jumbled mess? Some courses do
look nice, but some have bright color or even pastel color schemes and blurry textures.
Then there's the framerate, which chugs when there are too many opponents on screen.
A game like this should run fine without framerate problems on the Gamecube, especially
when some objects seem blocky and the texture resolutions remain pretty low. The
framerate is better in time trial modes, where there is no traffic or opponents,
but why should it only happen in that instance? If the framerate problems weren't
enough, there's also quite a bit of flickering in the shadows. I can't figure
out why Climax, which has done pretty well with the graphics in MotoGP 2 for the
X-Box, crapped out here. They know they could do better, so why didn't they?
The auido is a mixed bag. The sound effects are adequate, but the music sucks.
Some courses have some pretty weak music, I'm talking elevator music for crying out
loud. Was a licensed soundtrack too much to ask for? As for the sound effects, the
motorcycles can be a bit irritating after awhile, since they sound pretty loud.
Final Thought
I wanted to really like Speed Kings. I was hoping for something as good as
Burnout 2. But, I suppose I had high expectations. It's not a terrible game, but
I was able to pick out so many instances in the game where it made Burnout 2 so
much better. But then I realize that there are hardly any racing games of this
type on the system. On the Gamecube, if a racer involves motorcycles, it's usually
dirtbikes for off road racing. But we really have nothing with speedbikes. I would
say if you're desperate for something like that, then perhaps Speed Kings isn't a bad
way to go. But if you own a PS2 or an X-Box, then you do have other choices. This
game could have been a lot worse, but it could have also been a lot better.
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Speed Kings
