Gaming Target - Xbox: Pulse Racer

Written by Ryan Genno on September 09, 2003

Full Review: Check your pulse, you may die from boredom.

Video Game developers are trying desperately to create the next big racing game like a Super Mario Kart so they can cash in on a good thing. Although Microsoft has a killer First Person Shooter in Halo, they are still looking for a loveable racer to be another million-seller hit. Jaleco's Pulse Racer has an interesting idea to this sometimes over used genre. You race in the future with eight others to earn racing glory but if drive too fast through these tracks your driver may suffer a heart attack because of the extreme speeds. Pulse Racer combines elements from Nintendo's Mario Kart, Psychosis's Wipe Out, the classic NES Excitebike, and two tons of monkey crap to make for one of the biggest disasters for the Xbox today.

The game takes place in the not so distance future of 2045. The top men and women from around the world enter to compete in the dangerous Formula-T in hopes of winning the Cyber-Circuit T-5000. What makes a Formula-T race so risky is that your driver is directly linked to the vehicle and if you push your driver too hard then they'll black out for a few seconds thus costing you important racing time. This reminds me a lot of the old NES favourite Excitebike because in that game you can use a speed boost has much as you want but you still have to be careful of over heating your engines. Pulse Racer tries to recreate that same magic but it's very awkward to move when you have to use the analog stick to do these turbo or extra acceleration options.

Before you start racing away in PR though, you must select from a boring Single player or a lacklustre Multi player game. Since nobody will want to play with you in the split screen Multi-player mode (no Xbox Live support here), I'll just jump to the one player only game instead. The Single player games lets play in a Career mode so you can get a chance to unlock features you won't normally find in the other modes. From there on you then have the honour of picking characters that look like rejects from Phantasy Star Online and to make matters worse you then pick from the most heinously ugly square boxed vehicles I have ever seen in a game.

That brings me to the game's graphics, or lack there of. PR has some decent looking tracks that have some clever transparencies and lighting effects plus the frame rate is very smooth as well. I will give points for that. Sadly, there are only three different location designs here and the game quickly loses its impact. PR even has loading issues in certain areas causing the game to skip on occasion. To fit in with the futurist theme, the game's music here is mostly techno sonic stuff. It's unfortunate it's all just overly generic low energy techno that's ultimately forgettable. You can turn off your least favourite soundtracks (too bad they all stink) in the opening menu thankfully but there is no custom soundtrack option.