RC Cars Review
Just like the title says, RC Cars is a game of remote-controlled car racing. The game is more of an arcade racer than a sim of hobby racing, and could just as easily have been titled Micro Cars. The camera is locked behind your car at all times, so you don't have to contend with seemingly reversed controls as the car is headed toward you. The cars also travel far and wide, through tunnels and behind hills, and almost certainly out of range of any RC transmitter. You also never see any of the people with the controllers, so the human element of RC racing is completely absent. Finally, your car is given some decidedly arcade touches in the form of turbo boost and jump buttons. So now that we've established that the game will cause RC hobbyists to cringe, what about the rest of the gamers out there? Well RC Cars can be a fun little arcade racer, although it's not without its share of quirks that even those who've never controlled an RC car will notice.
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| Your RC car at the starting line. |
The races in RC Cars all take place on "tracks" that are set in a variety of outdoor locations (although the developers seem to have a thing for military installations). The courses have you racing through public beaches, campgrounds, and, yes, military bases as you try to complete from three to five laps before your opponents can do the same. Making things more difficult is that fact that no one bothered to tell the general public that there would be an RC race going on, so you'll need to contend with pedestrians, animals, and full-sized traffic. Everybody seems to have a deep-seated hatred for all things RC, because if you get too close to a person or animal your vehicle will be picked-up and tossed (or even shot at). This is not as big an obstacle to your racing as it may seem, though. Even though the game claims that the people and animals are AI-driven and feature realistic reactions, they pretty much seem to simply pace back and forth and you just about have to run into them to get a reaction out of them.
Now back to the courses. The game gives you some leeway in that you are not constrained to a track while racing, and even provides you with some shortcuts and ways to cut corners. The downside to this is that there is inevitably confusion the first few times that you race on a new level. The arrow pointer and an onscreen track map help somewhat, but they don't provide adequate guidance when you encounter hairpin turns or an area with a lot of obstacles. You'll make a few wrong turns and lose some races before you figure out just where you're supposed to go. Also, the game tracks your progress through the course through waypoint spots. You have to be careful to drive right over one because if you just pass by the edge of one you'll get "wrong way" warnings and the lap counter will stop until you go back and physically drive over the waypoint. The waypoints also serve as restart points. Should your car go over a cliff, off a bridge, or drown in water, it will be brought back to life at the last waypoint that you crossed. Unfortunately there are not a lot of waypoints on each course, so this can result in you losing significant ground. As it stands this makes accidents all the more frustrating for the player and the game should either provide more waypoints or reset your vehicle at the point of the mishap. You can restore your car to racing form at the press of a button when you are stuck upside down, so why not support the same mechanism when you inadvertently drop through a hole in bridge?
