Gaming Target - PlayStation 2: Riding Spirits

Written by Adam Woolcott on December 04, 2002

Full Review: Poor Swider-man was reduced to tears when he realized his hot pink tricycle wasn't a selectable bike.

With the explosion of Gran Turismo style racing games since the original GT hit the PlayStation, it's not surprising that someone went ahead and created a game in the GT vein, only substituting cars for motorcycles. What is surprising is that it's taken 4 years for someone to try. Unfortunately, it probably should have been a bit longer of a wait, since Spike's bike sim, Riding Spirits, might be designed in the spirit of Gran Turismo, but it's executed in such an uninspired, bland manner that the only people who will even care about this game are motorcycle freaks. It's a competent racer that presents a lot of challenge and plenty of customization, but like almost all of BAM's other choices of games to localize for America, it's too niche to really hit its mark.

RS is split into a short list of gameplay modes, with your typical single race and time trial modes, to go along with the GT-ish УRiding SpiritsФ career mode. Anyone who's ever played Gran Turismo (likeЕalmost everyone) will know exactly what to expect Ц you start on the bottom and work your way up to the top by knocking off more and more races and upgrading your bike. RS has about 100 bikes from major Japanese (like you didn't expect that) makers like Honda, Kawasaki, and Yamaha. Unlike cars, the bikes aren't easily identified, unless you're a bike fanatic, so picking and choosing your ride all depends on statistics. All the bikes are fully upgradeable and actually, it's way more in-depth than GT is, because there's menus for almost all the different parts of a motorcycle.

At the start there's 3 different classes to pick from of bikes Ц C, B, and A. Each consist of different bike types and difficulty, and some are only unlocked when you complete others. It's definitely loaded with different races and race types, so there's a lot to do here. There's no license tests though, diminishing the replay a bit. With the exception of that omission, the core of RS is very true to the GT style, almost falling into complete copy domain.

If you're a hardcore motorcycle fan, you probably won't buy into the tough difficulty, but for everyone else, this is a tough game to get used to. Since it's way more sim-style than any other motorcycle game, the handling is very different. Learning how the bikes work and how to take corners is very challenging, since you have to learn just when to coast through a turn, or slow down, since things go awfully bad otherwise. If you run off the track slightly, your bike slows down to a near stop, as if you drove into a pile of sand. If you don't do that when misjudging a curve, you'll probably just slam into a wall and get knocked off the bike, and thus losing a shot at winning the race.

This is because of the very tough AI. The other racers do make mistakes, but the thing is, they know exactly how to take a turn, thus racing perfectly is almost a necessity unless you just build up a bike that dominates them and can compensate for bad cornering (like the Gran Turismo method). If you play it fairly and keep with even bikes, it's just a game of perfection, since even a teeny mistake or just wasting 2 or 3 seconds more on a tough turn will put the other riders in position to take over. It's not rubberband AI though, since getting too far behind will just mean the end of the race, since you'll never catch the other bikes. Naturally once you learn how to take the tracks, based on how many times you play them of course, it becomes a bit easier, though once a new bike is in your possession, learning how that bike works changes everything.

To Riding Spirits' credit, the controls are very smooth and responsive, and actually quite innovative, since it lets you control how your rider leans in turns, changing the turning a tad. It's off by default, but when it's on, the game gets even more challenging until you can master it, since shifting your weight in a turn on a motorcycle is a necessity to racing well. Even without it, the bikes respond well to your actions, though it does require a bit of major force to slow down sometimes Ц something that comes with practice.

What really hurts Riding Spirits though, is the general blandness. It's actually a fairly fun game when you get down to brass tacks, but there just isn't any excitement. The AI might be tough, but like a lot of motorcycle games, the riders don't feel interactive, almost like you're racing against ghosts. They just run their pattern and racing lines and that's it. There's a decent sense of speed, but you just don't УfeelФ anything when racingЕno immersion to it, no real experience of racing a motorcycle; something all racing games need. It's enjoyable to a fault, but not one of those addictive, just one more race kind of games. Perhaps it's because I'm not a motorcycle aficionado, but Riding Spirits just lacks excitement.

It doesn't help that the graphics don't pull you in either. In fact, they feel very much like a 1st generation PS2 game, with graphics that would be poor on the 4-year-old Dreamcast. Some stuff, like the skies look nice, but the textures and track designs are poor and lack any wow factor. The bikes look decent, but it's tough to really differentiate the different ones at first glance. As mentioned, there is a sense of speed, which is nice, but at 30 FPS, it could be a lot better. The game really just looks washed out.

Another problem with the graphics is the bland presentation. The menu screens and in-race displays are lacking a lot Ц reminds me of the very basic fonts and designs of the original Gran Turismo, only not quite as boring. It's easy to navigate the menus, but they look slapped together and not very interesting. It's not a big deal or anything, but they fail to draw you into the game, and the weak in-race presentation is so lacking that it's sad.

Continuing the bland trend is the sound and music. There's really not a lot of music, just menu music and the little jingle that plays after a race Ц the races themselves are made up of effects. With my enjoyment of music, having none in a race is lacking, and tends to really draw a player out of the game since there's no tunes to get them excited (unlike how Moto GP on Xbox could with the custom soundtracks, and even the standard Euro-techno). It's all up to the sound effects to draw you in, and that fails as well, since there's really nothing thrilling about repetitive motorcycle engine noises, it's more annoying than anything.