Written By Shaun McCracken
Wreckless was one of the first X-Box games to truly demonstrate what the machine
could do. Littered with many special effects, lighting and high resoultion textures,
Wreckless was a showpiece for someone to show off their X-Box. But Wreckless this
version of Wreckless shows how much the X-Box release relied mainly on it's graphical
flair. When you take away all the glitz and glamour, you're left with a game that
can be fun, if not for some of the inconsitencies it has problems with.
The main plot of Wreckless is actually divided into two stories that involve
the Yakuza mob. You can either play as the Flying Dragons or a couple of spies.
The Flying Dragons are in a way like bounty hunters. They really don't seem like
they're tied to a criminal enforcement agency, but the police really never go after
them for wreckless behavior (pun?). And as for the spies, you really never get the
idea that they are spies until a few missions into the game. Their opening cinematic
scene shows them talking about stealing all the Yakuza have. The focus of this game
seems kind of askew. It's like they mixed elements of SpyHunter with the insane
pace of Crazy Taxi.
The missions of the game are fairly different for each group. You'll have to race
opponents, destroy cars, steal back certain items, take some pictures of a person
and so on. And before you start the mission, it seems pretty easy on what needs to be done.
But that's where things get complicated. The arrow that is supposed to guide you is
useless half the time, it just wanders to where the goal is, but not how to get there.
The map is about as useless, since you can't see the whole map, you only geta chunk
of it, and it doesn't display everything, like checkpoints.
But those small elements really only play a part of the hinderance you'll
encounter in the game. The overall design of the game seems cluttered. You drive around
in a cramped city setting with cars EVERYWHERE. This game has the worst traffic
I have ever seen in a video game. Littered with cars, there's really not much room
to make a clear line in the road. Add the fact that some drivers are just really
stupid, and you've got problems. It's hard to complete some missions due to the
excessive amount of traffic. If there's a mission that calls for not damaging
a paticular item, how is this possible when you can't drive past a car? Sure, you
can push it out of the way with a missle, but that makes things worse.
Speaking of missiles, you have a small bit of arsenal at your disposal. About
8 missiles and 3 "Adrenaline Boosts", and while the missiles help a little, the
Adrenaline Boost is not really a boost at all, it just slows down the pace of the
game (for why?). And you can't replenish your invetory at all. Use all the missles,
and that's it. Then you're left to using your car. And here's something odd, your
car does not take damage! In a game like this, it does make life a little easier,
but with so much you smash into, you would think it would slow down, at least. As
for how the game handles, it handles better than I imagined. Some places said the
controls were poor, but for some reason I had no trouble at all. It is fairly
loose, kind of like Cruisn' USA's handling, but I never really had problems with
it.
The visuals of the game can best be described as average. The texture work,
while not utterly horrible, is not nearly as nice as other GCN games. You play
this, then you play Burnout 2, and you'll notice a difference. I guess you can
blame some of the diminished texture quality on the huge city environment, since
there's just so much to place a texture on. But then again, the X-Box could pull
this off effortlessly, and with effects to boot. I'm sure if there was some extra
attention on porting the game, it can look very close to the X-Box version. I
know the GCN can pull off better. Basically, it looks like an average Dreamcast
title.
The sound effects are not thoroughly stunning either. Theres a lot of tire
screaching, crashing noises and explosions, but they seem to have been sampled at
a slightly lower rate. The music is pretty average, and the voice acting is comical
at best.
When you put so much emphasis on graphics, you really forget about gameplay, and
Wreckless is a perfect example of this. The game looked great on the X-Box, but
when you get down to the design and gameplay of the game, you're left with something
that seems cluttered and a bit incoherent. If you have an X-Box, it's best to
go with that version as it does look better. On any term, however, Wreckless is
best as a rental, or at the very most, a decent bargain title (I bought mine for
$10). The GCN version is not at all cutting edge, and really is overshadowed by
better releases, even in this genre.
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Wreckless: The Yakuza Missions
