ThunderChrome (c) H&A Action Games
17%


By: Ned

"You got 3 things you can do, 1, you can practice on the course of your choice; 2, you can talk with one of the other members, and C, you challenge a member to a race. So what's it gonna be sport?". This intro movie dialogue was the only thing mildly entertaining about this game. The rest is all downhill from here. This is a racing game like (I hate to even speak about this game in the same breath as this) NFS2. You get 1 car to start with and can practice on the massive number of tracks (5). To access the other cars, you have to beat the owner of the car you want.

Does this game look any good? God no. It uses your 3D card, but beyond accelerating the frame rate the card is only used to blur the heck out of the already low detail texture maps. It ran smooth but it was ugly in the process. The trees are just flat sprites and you can see the black masking around the edges of each tree. The rocky cliffs that border the track aren't much better. Even the backdrop is low res, so much so that you can see each of the square pixels. This is easily one of the ugliest games this year.

This game has 2 sound effects. The engine and the sound made when banging into the edges of the track. I heard no music.

For what you get, this game should be a 2 meg, freeware download. The "course design" consists of hard left and right turns in succession. The crazy thing about the control was that neither the joystick or the keyboard was fast enough to turn in time. But you could actually use both at the same time and turn more than if you used just one. So I was forced to push left on a joystick while holding left on my keyboard, just so that I could turn properly. I tried to challenge another member but it kept kicking me back to the main menu. So I couldn't even get another car to try. However I'm sure each car drives exactly the same so it's probably a minor element. This game is so far back from what titles like NFS2se and Test Drive 4 offer to racing fans. You get fake cars, stupid tracks, and horrible graphics. Sitting in a cardboard box, and holding a dinner plate as a steering wheel, would be more realistic, and fun, than this game.

Good stuff:
NOTHING

Bad stuff:
graphics stink
terrible tracks
fake cars
lousy sound
and on and on......

Graphics: 3 / 20
Sound: 5 / 15
Gameplay: 5 / 25
Fun Factor: 2 / 20
Multiplayer Play: 0 / 5
Packaging: 0 / 5
Overall Impression: 2 / 10

Overall Rating: 17 / 100


Rating
17%