{tag [News]} {tag [PC]}

European Street Racing from Xider and Team-6 Games, which will be released in Europe for PC on 21 September, is a street racer that lets you race through 7 great cities of Europe. The game allows you to see London as you always wanted to see it, from behind the wheel at 200km/hr. Other cities in the game include Moscow, Warsaw, Paris, Madrid, Berlin and Hamburg. The tracks do not follow the cities' roads exactly, it's more like they took the iconic landmarks of the cities in question and placed them in approximate positions and then built a track to drive past them all. Look kids, Parliament, Big Ben, Westminster, London eye. 

  Graphically speaking the game is good. It seems like a lot of attention was put into making the environment look and feel like the city you are racing through. In London there are ample pedestrian crossing markers, red phone boxes and royal mail cans for you to destroy, accidentally of course. In fact they even drive on the left side of the road which took me a moment to realize. In addition there are configuration options for the graphics which will make the game play on a wide range of computers while maintaining the good look to the game. You just need to adjust for optimal playability.
The soundtrack in the game stood out as exceptional. It features a mix of techno and rock and features some up-and-coming bands like Redshirt Theory and Drainage. Never heard of them? I hadn't either until I started poking around for more information about them. While looking into who the bands were I found that all of the songs in the game are in OGG format and sitting in the music directory sorted into folders by genre. The really nice thing about this is that you can drag and drop your own OGG, WMA or MP3 files in and the game will play them. You can even make a playlist tailored to your taste. Of course running Winamp or some other audio player in the background has the exact same effect but then you cannot control the soundtrack from the keyboard while playing.

As I said the soundtrack is fantastic and it's the perfect thing for ripping through city streets. However when the racing begins the sound effects step all over the great soundtrack and it ends up sounding like I'm listening to NWA on cassette far too loud for the stock speakers in my 1979 Firebird. This is remedied by turning down he volume on the sound effects so the music can clearly play.

Speaking of playing, be sure you have a gamepad for this game. Driving with the keyboard was difficult but after some time, and some car upgrades I managed easily enough. At least there's no need to worry about ramming into anything along the way because your car cannot be completely destroyed only damaged. So if some old fogey is moving too slow in front of you just drive them into a wall. As you run into things your car will take damage and eventually the hood and trunk (that's boot for you Brits) will pop up and start flapping about. This can make it difficult to see, so just smash into something else and they should go flying off sooner or later. I spent five minutes in Trafalgar just running into things to see if the car would explode or not and the answer was NO, but you will need to pay for repairs after the race to maintain performance. As an added bonus I found out that pigeons explode into a shower of sparks when you run them over. Not overly realistic but entertaining nonetheless.

The game features three modes of play - arcade, ghost race and multiplay. Arcade is you against the computer in every level and you need to win these races to unlock the next level and next race. They vary in number of cars and difficulty and are either a several lap race or a there-and-back. Ghost race is simply practice. Race once and set your time then race again and try to beat it. Finally multiplay is the online multiplayer component of the game allowing you to race with up to 6 others on LAN or Internet.

As you progress you will have a choice of 16 different cars to buy and customize. You can upgrade the engine and the gearbox, change the color of the car and even tune it for top speed, acceleration or handling. The game is entertaining and easy to pick up and play with races lasting between 15 seconds and 5 minutes. So you can easily squeeze out a race or two during the lunch hour with your office mates or during the intermission of the football match.

Publisher: XIDER Games
Developer: Team 6
UK Distributor: Pinnacle Software
Official web: www.XIDER-games.com
Release date: 21 September 2007
Price: £19.99
PEGI: 3+
Format: PC
Genre: Racing