Gaming Target - PlayStation 2: Tokyo Xtreme Racer: Zero

Written by Adam Woolcott on August 07, 2001

Full Review: Is it a CarPG or Car Fighter?

It's hard to make a racing game unique, especially when realism is concentrated on heavily. There's just not much to do besides putting a handful cars on a road and let you bump, grind and powerslide and see who comes out on top. Thus, when a racing game mixes in some unique and creative traits to the usual fare, it's easy to stand out.

So is the case with Tokyo Xtreme Racer Zero, one of the latest PlayStation 2 racing games. While truly only a sequel to Tokyo Highway Battle on PSOne, TXR0 is still a very different experience than racers like Gran Turismo. It's got a lot of nagging flaws and some boring lapses, but on the whole it's an entertaining game when things pick up. It's a rare white-knuckle game that either will hook you or bore you, but it's worth a try.

Tokyo Xtreme Racer Zero is really a port of Tokyo Xtreme Racer 2 from the Dreamcast, with the added 2-player battle mode mixed in, along with graphical touch-ups all over. If you played the DC version you don't need to bother, but if you haven't (like me) it's a whole new type of racer.

What makes it so new and fresh? The approach. Instead of just going around and racing other cars, you drive through the streets of Tokyo looking for other street racers. If you're curious, this is a real thing people do in Japan late at night, and was even the basis for the movie Fast and the Furious. When you find a driver from one of a handful of rival gangs, you flash your headlights at them, and it's on, baby. Mano-a-mano, one on one, you race through the streets until your fighting game-like energy bar runs out. The bar diminishes depending on how far the loser is behind, and points get docked if you run into walls or other cars. Conceivably, you can be way ahead and lose if you're a clumsy driver.

When you win, you gain money for upgrading your car a la Gran Turismo Ц you can get engine upgrades, tire upgrades, or even aerodynamic upgrades. Then you can tune your ride like GT and go out and see how it performs. And like GT (especially GT3), you can easily tell the changes in the car after modifications, from handling to speed or acceleration. The car just feels so much different and handles so much differently than before.

This element is very RPG-ish Ц making TXR0 sort of a hybrid Fighting Game/RPG. The concept is incredibly unique and different. It keeps the core of racing, but mixes in a much different way of doing that racing.

There are 125 cars in TXR0 to play with Ц and while they aren't licensed cars, any car buff or even a Gran Turismo fan will be able to pick out each car. Perhaps there is no Toyota or Nissan license, but the car models of Skylines, Celicas, and Supras are exact copies of the real thing. How this is possible is beyond me (without violating trademarks), but hey it helps figure out which car is which.

Back to the racing part Ц there's over 100 miles of road to race on, most of which gets unlocked later on in the game, after playing the same 8 different areas over and over, knocking off as many drivers as possible. As said before, there are a handful of rival gangs to race against Ц defeating the 5 flunkies will let you race against the leader Ц who normally is pretty darn hard. Defeat some of them, and you might get to unlock their car.

Occasionally, you'll be challenged by УbossesФ Ц there's the Wanderers; a team of..well..wanderers who only will race you at specific intervals that are affected by your PS2 internal clock sometimes, or by what rivals you defeat. There are also tough gangs like the 13 Devils to compete against as well. All told, there are 400 rivals to race and defeat before you can say you've defeated the game entirely.

Needless to say, TXR0 offers a lot of depth and may be a game you'll play for quite some time. The problem is, there's a chance you'll either get hooked to the game, or bored of it. See, while you're racing around looking for rivals Ц and if you're not racing someone, you're just driving around the freeway weaving traffic looking. For the impatient, this will get tiring really fast. Also, after a while you may start racing around and be unable to find a new opponent to race Ц just your defeated rivals instead. And sometimes to get things rolling again, you'll have to race someone you've already defeated. This can get very annoying and might turn off a few people.

Truly, when things get rolling it's an incredibly fun game. Defeating a rival, then racing the leader of that gang, followed by a race against a Wanderer or another boss gang is really fun and keeps the adrenalin pumping. It's just that sometimes those moments get spread too thin and gets boring.

The other hot/cold flaws are the weird AI and loose controls. Hot/cold, because some will like it, and some won't. The AI is rather difficult, almost impossible in some cases. For some reason, the CPU cars, even if they don't seem as souped up as your own, will blow you away most of the time and you'll have to rely on capitalizing on mistakes. The CPU AI cars cannot handle turns worth a crap, so you'll get your chances to bounce back, but if you don't race absolutely flawlessly, you may lose your spot in a hurry. No help is the traffic that sometimes blatantly gets in your way and costs you a race. And if you accidentally hit them, it's over. Some will hate this with a passion. It doesn't bother me personally too much, but sometimes the CPU cars will cheat wildly to win.

The control and physics engine is take it or leave it too. The control is extremely loose and actually quite annoying. It's not that the cars are hard to control Ц but they handle like they drive on ice. There's plenty of times where you'll be careening around the road unable to straighten your car out right away. Countering this little quirk is necessary to avoid playing bumper cars with the regular drivers who populate the roads. It can be something you can get used to, but at first it's kind of strange getting used to. Or I've just played too much GT3.

Don't fret, there are positives to the game Ц the thrill level is high. There is a really exciting feeling to racing around a populated street against one other driver who's just as determined as you are to win. And when you finally knock off that SOB that keeps on cheating like a madman, it's a great thing.

And if the main Quest gets daunting, you can just go into time trial mode and race around forever, or do battles against one rival after another. Or if you have a friend, the 2 player races can be just as exciting and entertaining. There's also a preview of Fast and the Furious, as well as a short documentary on the street-racing phenomenon, to occupy some time.

Visually, TXR0 is no Gran Turismo, but it holds its own pretty well in some places. The car designs are pretty nice and you can easily pick out what car is which Ц and the various detail changes are evident as well. And while the 100 miles of roads is nice, a lot of it looks the same and gets somewhat tedious. The detail is nice with roadway signs and lots of buildings, but it's repetitive and there's little variety. Basically it looks good but there isn't much of it that's different. The focus is on the racing, which is great.

The sound is the weakest link here. The effects are nice, with lots of different engine sounds and such, but the music is really poor. It's repetitive techno themes that aren't even close to memorable and really very boring. This area could have had a lot of improvement. The playlist feature is very nice, but it's too bad what you get to use isn't very good.