If you love arcade racing, but think there is nowhere near enough carnage involved, then this game is for you.
At first glance, this game seems exceedingly simple for a racing game published in 2010. You literally only have an accelerate and brake button to worry about as far as the actual driving is concerned. Equally simple is the HUD (Heads Up Display). Basically, there isn't one. You only see a very small amount of information literally hovering in the air behind your car (the default view betrays this game's arcade appeal by being third-person directly behind your vehicle), such as lap number and rank position in the race. No map. No speedometer. No rear-view mirror. Nothing that could potentially distract you from the task of dodging exploding cars flying in your path! And this is where the game truly shines! Not content to simply hurl you down a number of different tracks at break-neck speed, you must also contend with all manner of explosions and obstacles flying at you on a regular basis. Of course, your opponents (up to 8) must also contend with this chaos, as these explosions are not triggered automatically or randomly: Either you or any other racer on the track can activate one any time you have built up a sufficient level of power by either drifting, drafting, or flying through the air off of jumps. After gaining enough of said power, you can activate a level 1 "power play" by hitting a button on your controller when target cars are highlighted. Level 2 power plays take much longer to accumulate enough power to activate, but these are the real show-stoppers, as they tend to cause catastrophic damage to a huge area of the track, often permanently altering the course for the duration of the race. Examples of level 1 power plays would be a bridge section exploding and collapsing debris on the track or a bus parked next to the track suddenly exploding and hurtling onto the track. Level 2 power plays are much more dramatic, like blowing up a massive dam, totally obliterating the cars that were driving on it at the time and significantly adjusting the track for the remainder of the race.
All of this destruction and mayhem are not only available on a good variety of different tracks, but also a number of different modes. Besides the basic race mode, you can also enter an elimination competition, where the last-place car is taken out of the race every 20 seconds. Detonator is basically a single car time-trial, but with various power plays automatically triggered in an attempt to screw you up. Survival pits you against a series of semi-trucks that drop exploding barrels out of the back and you must pass as many as you can in order to gain points. Finally, air raid and air revenge task you with avoiding a helicopter that sporadically fires missile barrages at you. All of these modes are present in the "season" mode that plays like a futuristic tv show and lets you unlock various cars, modes, and tracks as you progress, as well as "quick play" mode which lets you compete in a single game-type of your choice. Additionally, you can take your game online or in split-screen mode with the race, survival, and elimination modes.
If all of this sounds fun, it truly is. But this wouldn't be much of a review if I didn't include some of the not-so-good elements of this game. First, and most irritating, is the insane level of "rubber-banding" that the computer controlled opponents utilize. Basically, if you are in first place and the nearest car to you is miles away, in order to make the game more "exciting", your opponents are granted a ridiculous speed boost in order to make the race seem more intense. What it really does though is make the race more frustrating, as you watch helplessly while an opponent that was nowhere near you 5 seconds ago suddenly screams past you at mach 1 right before you were about to cross the finish line. This resulted in numerous victories being stolen from me at the last second while I played the game, particularly in the later stages of the season mode. Additionally, while the computer controlled opponents are not very good at nailing you with power plays, being taken out by one basically insures you will not win the race, especially towards the end of season mode when getting hit by a power play can easily take you from 1st place to last place in a second, where you will almost certainly remain for the duration of the race. Thankfully, you can avoid these annoyances with the AI by taking your racing online, where you will unfortunately find that everyone playing uses the most advanced and hardest to unlock cars in the game, forcing you to either get 1st place in every race in season mode in order to compete, or simply accepting last place over and over again. Online is also plagued by some rather bad lag which makes cars teleport all over the place, making it really hard to hit them with power plays (which sometimes fail to work at all due to the lag).
Although this game does have some issues, it can be intensely satisfying to drop a freeway overpass on someone's head while you take the lead. If you love arcade racing, but think there is nowhere near enough carnage involved, then this game is for you.