Original Release: Acclaim, 2003, PlayStation 2 / GameCube
The final game in Acclaim’s low-key challenger series to F-Zero and Wipeout in the “futuristic racing” genre
XGRA: Extreme-G Racing Association (GameCube, Acclaim, 2003)
Where to Buy: eBay
How to Emulate: coming soon!
Review by: C. M0use
I’d never heard of this series prior to stumbling into this game, but it had three prior entries: two on the N64 and one on the PS2/Gamecube. It turns out this was a decent enough place to start as it seemed to be something of a “reboot” for the franchise, changing up the driving physics and the way weapons were handled … alas, Acclaim went bankrupt only a year later so this also ended up being the last XGRA game.
It’s obviously comparable to F-Zero and Wipeout, but it does a few things differently. Instead of magnetic tracks you’re on futuristic motorcycles … thankfully gated into the tracks at all times so you can’t go flying to your death. You can get shot or exploded right outta the race though, each racer packs a variety of weapons and you have a limited amount of recharging shields that you have to keep an eye on. It also focuses a bit more on character personality, as each pops up with assorted Starfox-like taunts during races.
Reading around a bit, the complaint from longtime fans of the series seems to be that this entry feels slower (in terms of visual effects and FPS) and that the control is too sensitive. I agree on the “too sensitive” part, at least with the crappy low-stat bikes you’re forced to start with. I dunno about “slow” though, quite the opposite I found, some tracks whip along too fast with all their curves and hills to really drive tactically without sheer memorization. Maybe that issue was exclusive to the PS2 version?
XGRA offers “time trial” and customizable one-off race “arcade” modes, but to use anything but the one super-crapper starting bike you’ll have to go through the story mode to unlock stuff (also gives you more than just the three paltry starting tracks to work with). Despite the game being kinda slippery and hard to wrangle overall, this mode isn’t bad as you’re just given a “season” of races at a time and have to reach a cumulative point total across the season to unlock goodies and move on (and you get some amount of points for anything but a last-place finish. You’re also given secondary objectives, ranging from setting a new lap record to taking out a particular racer, you’re not penalized for failing or ignoring these but completing them grants more in-story upgrades for your bike.
As far as aesthetics go, the backdrops are kinda dark and plain but it does have more intricate tracks than most racers of the period. Scrimping on background detail also helps it run fast on underpowered systems if you’re emulating (my previous-gen gaming laptop chokes on some F-Zero GX tracks but runs this perfectly). You choose from either a “dance” or “rock” soundtrack, and you really wanna go with “dance” regardless of your tastes. “Rock” isn’t really rock so much as cut-rate early ’00s nu-metal in the tantrum-y Linkin Park vein, “Dance” is a bunch of 90s techno but it’s far more palatable and fitting to the action overall.
It’s not at all a bad high-speed “future racer,” kinda hard to compare directly to F-Zero or Wipeout as it isn’t really trying to do quite the same things. I found it somewhat fun but the slippery handling, starting you with the worst vehicle and forcing you to unlock everything else, and the frequent inability to actually see what’s up ahead on the track put me off from really putting in the time investment to get good and comfy at it. It did make me curious to go back and see the earlier entries that reportedly had tighter handling, though. And if I was stuck on a desert island with it I could probably get more into it.
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