Welcome back to our near-weekly dive into the games from the 2009 Nintendo DS release of Atari Greatest Hits Volume 1 from Codemystics. Today we move on from "Mind Games" and go full tilt into three "Racing" games with mixed results. This "Racing" category was a bit of a strange one in that only one of the three games was a pure racing game while the other two had shooting/hunting type games with only minor racing elements. Math Gran Prix would have fit well into this category too if it was not already in "Mind Games." Not that two of these titles not being actual racing games biased my opinion of them as I played them on their own gameplay merits and not what the category supposedly promised.
So for the first three games, I thought I was playing Slot Racers and was confused as to what was going on and why I could not shoot a missile at the oncoming car or really what was going on. Then I realized my mistake, reread the instructions for Dodge 'Em, and played again. As you can tell from my scores, reading how the game plays only slightly improved my scores. One of several problems I have with this game is that it moves almost too fast. You can finish an entire game, with a low-low score of 080 in 33 seconds. There is almost no time for you to realize what it is that you did wrong or how to improve apart from just playing over and over again with only minimal feelings that you are getting anywhere.
I just did not have any fun.
Verdict: No.
The game tells you right up front that this game is designed for two players, but if you have two 3DS' with two copies of the game, then you can play Slot Racers the way the gods intended, otherwise it is like playing Monopoly by yourself with two pieces. You decide which piece you are going to favor while controlling two pieces and hope you do not lose to yourself.
The point of this game is to drive around one of a handful of mazes while chasing your opponent and shooting at them. Depending on the mode, your shots will either travel at the same speed as your vehicle or faster. Playing this game by myself was strange and at times, very unfair because I could position myself in a way that would allow me to be behind the other car and just take shots at the other car (and because I was controlling both sets of cars with the one controller) would also shoot me, but because I was behind them, my shot would hit them before their shot would hit me, and when they were hit, they would be propelled forward a bit and absorb their own shot.
Verdict: No.
Sprintmaster was Atari's console attempt of the arcade Sprint series where you drive a stock car (although the cover art does depict an F-1 race car, we can forgive that I guess) around a track with variable shapes and road conditions. The thing with Sprintmaster is that I think, with time, I could probably get pretty good at this game, figuring out the best way to flutter-tap the accelerator around curves, when the best time (if ever) to grab the traction or speed-up buffs on the track and the best way to use (if ever) the "unpredictable tar slick" going into curves.
I can see the appeal of the game, but it is just not for me for a couple of reasons. First, I played the game nine times and only won one race on the easiest round track on the easiest difficulty setting, which really just goes to show how poorly I played the game. Second, any track that has an under/overpass completely obscures your car from view, so if you happen to wedge yourself against a wall, trying to get out pretty much ends any chance you have at winning the race because there is no reverse, so yeah. Secondly, making any changes to the race, you have to completely back out of the game and restart, such as changing from Crash to Bounce (when impacting a wall), the number of laps, or even the race track and the surface. It only takes a few seconds, but it feels cumbersome and time-consuming.
Verdict: No.
So there we have it. Sprintmaster was the only real racing game while the others only felt somewhat tangentially related to racing as they were geared more toward attacking or avoiding the other player/car; you know, like Battle Mode in Mario Kart. I really wanted to like Sprintmasters too because the game felt good for the most part, but I think a large part of it boiled down to me not being a great player with these types of games (RC Pro-Am, Ivan "Ironman" Stewart's Super Off Road), and the obscured road with overpasses, which ultimately meant that the one real racing game in "Racing" still received a No from me. Yeah, 0:3 is not a great record and if you take in these last two categories, we are at a 2:9, but I promise some more promising titles in the coming weeks.
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