New York Race Review

Being a hard-core Blade Runner fan, I found the vision of future given by Luc Besson in his Fifth Element sterile and uninteresting. On the other hand, I have to admit that I remembered several scenes from the film; the best of them being the "car" race through New York. Kalisto designers decided to use this scene and turn it into a challenging arcade racing game.

I must stress, however, that this release is only partially based on the movie. Not only have the developers taken a lot of ideas from this film, but they also gathered a lot of gameplay elements from other arcade games. This makes the game definitely not innovative, but at least it brings the great atmosphere of futuristic New York to your screens... with Segway, development, who can tell what future has in store for us.

Jean Batiste Emanuel Zorg, seems to dominate the future.

I'm faster than you pal!

The game features several different modes of play: Championship, Single Race, Time Attack and Keirin. Championship is the main mode of play and contains the "campaign" - a set of several stages which differ in difficulty, vehicles and tracks. The stages are Qualification, Beginner, Pro and Expert; in order to reach the next stage, you have to finish the previous one on a certain position, or with a predetermined number of points. This complicates things a bit, as you will always be driving the worst possible pieces of junk that could be found on some futuristic flee market.

Speaking of which, the first car you get to drive is the Corben Dallas' cab. At the beginning of each level, you can only use the worst car of the current category, and cannot use any of the cars from the previous category. For instance, you will start the beginner level by driving the Pacific Old Lady, and if you manage to reach the goal on the third position or better, on the next track you will be able to choose the Fratelli C-22 Pro (a funny van). In the expert mode, you will even get to drive a police car. There are a lot of hidden cars, and if you manage to finish the game, you will have access to more than 25 cars, depending on your navigation skills. The vehicles have been divided into Hover, Cruiser and Speeder classes, but this doesn't influence gameplay much. Each vehicle has Top Speed, Handling, Shield and Dive. Speeder vehicles have great top speed, and low shields, and the Cruisers will have low speed and powerful shields.

Time Attack and Keirin modes are excellent for practicing for the championship races. In the championship mode, you have a limited number of times you can attempt to win a leading position, and Time Attack and Keirin will let you explore the tracks as much as you want. Time Attack is actually a race against the clock, and Keirin is an eliminatory race, or to be more precise, the last racer to pass the checkpoint is eliminated each round. You will drive each race against seven opponents, and you will have a hard time achieving a good position until you get used to the vehicle sensitivity.

The races take place on 12 tracks, which can be unlocked by advancing through levels. The tracks are divided into four districts: Jet Set, Middle Class, Seedy District and China Town. Each track has specific length and track elements. The fun in this game comes from the fact that you have a certain freedom to move in 3D space, as you are not stuck to the ground. Tracks are littered with obstacles, some of which are immobile, and some move their own way (elevators, cars, trash). You should try to avoid both as they can damage your fragile car.

You will soon discover that it is not only important to be the fastest one. You have to try to gather bonus elementals on your way. These are always random, but nevertheless always useful. You can pick up Fire (guided missile which hits and slows down an enemy vehicle) Water (a water bubble with the practically identical function, apart from the fact that it can slow down several vehicles within range) Earth (strengthens your shields), Air (turbo-boost, one of the most useful bonuses). The AI driven enemy will use all these bonuses to full extent, and you better try to do the same.

All tracks have been designed pretty much the same. Aquarium Tower, for instance, contains a short section in which you see huge fish while racing through glass tubes, and the rest of the track looks like any other track in the district. Graphics are definitely the best thing in this game. The vehicles and the futurist New York have been designed in detail. Still, New York Race can be nothing more than short-term fun due to the monotonous tracks.