Game Review: Cruis'n

Cruis'n

• Publisher: Midway
• Developer: Midway San Diego
• Release Date: 27 November 2007
• System: Wii
• Genre: Racing
• Players: 1-2
• Rarity/Cost: Moderate, US$10-20

(This review was updated on 28 November 2017.)

I have in the past regaled you with a tale about the rise and fall of the Initial D Arcade Stage series of coin-op racing games.  The short of it was, the way i saw it, that its death was catalysed by a rival title, The Fast and the Furious, a far more basic experience.  Welp, after two arcade sequels (Super Bikes in 2006 and Drift in 2007), the game made its first home appearance for the Wii, swapping out its movie licence for another familiar name: Cruis'n.  For gamers of a newer generation, I may need to introduce you to Cruis'n USA.  This 1994 arcade game was a joint project between Midway and Nintendo, and ran on hardware which was intended to form the basis of the Nintendo 64 console later on. Even though that didn’t exactly come to pass, the game was nonetheless a launch-window title for the N64.  But was it any good?  Well, with its linear track design and rubberband AI, it was certainly far better in its day.  And the same is true of our current subject, but unfortunately its day had passed long before it even came out.

Cruis’n features twelve tracks and twelve playable cars, classic and modern alike. Models like the Nissan Skyline and Pontiac GTO were used to great effect in the films, so at least they got that part right. Most of these cars will need to be unlocked; the courses by playing through a single-player career, and the cars by accumulating winnings from your races. However, the later cars, while having stronger base stats, are merely generic reproductions of luxury and exotic cars, and by the time you unlock them, you’ll have put so many upgrades into one of the starter cars that you’ll have no reason to start fresh with another model. See, every time you start a race, you can add an upgrade to your car of choice, ranging from performance upgrades, cosmetic additions, and a nitro boost system. So you can tell why even those of us with more refined gaming palates got suckered into repeat plays in the arcades. But while this setup would've been acceptable there, by the standards of a home console game this upgrade system pales massively compared to franchises such as Need For Speed or Forza Motorsport.

The three performance-upgrade categories are engines, for acceleration, spoilers and wings, for top speed, and tires, for handling.   But they also serve double-duty as visual attachments, in the form of these massive air blowers, triple-decker wings, and shiny rims. *sigh*  I only know about cars what I learned from Gran Turismo, but I can guess that these aren’t the most effective ways to boost these acumen in the real world.  But on the other hand, real improvements like a tightly-tuned transmission or even a turbo fan wouldn’t show up on the outside of your car, and we’ve gotta express these upgrades visually somehow!   Because… extreme?  As I mentioned before, there’s also the nitrous, a one-time upgrade which gives you three fixed-length boosts every race. And then there are undercarriage lights and decals, which serve no practical purpose, but they sure look interesting! Unfortunately, you only get one decal pattern for each car, and even changing your paint/neon colour is a chore. Instead of cycling through a pre-set pattern of colours, pressing the change button picks a new colour at random, meaning you could spend a lot of time until you get the one you want. Ladies and gentlemen, they just didn’t care!  While we're on the subject of time-wasters, the loading times are pretty nasty, averaging thirty to forty-five seconds for one race. That's longer than individual loads from the 2006 SONIC THE HEDGEHOG, if you can believe that!  (Trust me -- I've checked.)

The key to success is to spam double-tap dashes

A race of eight cars on generally unchallenging tracks, some lousy with straightaways. Seriously, you'll have to work up to the Hard or Extreme courses until you get to material that would provide the slightest hint of a challenge by the standards of any other racing game. Seriously, half the length of most tracks are nothing but straightaways, and even where there are curves, there’s seldom a need to brake or even let go of the accelerator in order to survive them. Sure, you’ll have to stay awake to dodge traffic, both with and against your direction, and crash into the occasional shortcut, but for the most part? Snoozeville...

I’m going to bring up the Initial D game again in order to juxtapose their approaches to track design. A good racing game, for example the Initial D or even Gran Turismo series, makes you really take the time to learn its courses inside and out. Each curve and corner has its own personality, i.e. what’s the ideal line for going through them, and what speed to enter them at. Those other games I just mentioned are stocked full of them, and it’s the experience of learning these racing lines that contributes to a memorable experience among its peers. In a good racing game, the environment comes first, and the track is designed around it.   As I mentioned in my review of such, the majority of courses in the Initial D series are one-way affairs. But they still managed to pack plenty of hairpin turns in those tracks, but more importantly, in a way that makes sense. The courses in those games are set on hillsides, and running the roads laterally along the mountain face, turning around every so often, allows the angle of the road to be as flat as possible, so as not to put so much strain on cars going uphill, or keep cars going downhill from stopping safely.

But Cruis'n seems to have it the other way around. The track designs are overly linear, so driving-game veterans will have precious few opportunities to apply what they've learned over their years of experience in good games. Heck, its spiritual successor, Cruis'n USA, had more curves than this! As a result of this linearity, each section of the course feels identical until you reach a section that has a slightly different setting than the last, only for the visual boredom to set in seconds later, and so on. And geographical verisimilitude? Forget about it! A few landmarks aren’t enough to convince me that your course is taking place in New York or San Francisco or whatever. And would it kill you to make a Philadelphia stage?

Not helping matters is the physics model, which dare I say it, is unrealistic. When you crash into another car, you might get knocked back but still maintain most of your forward acceleration a second later. Or you might get flipped into the air in a pre-defined animation. Nothing like both cars stopping dead in their tracks or anything, you know, like in the real world. Which wouldn't work in this game anyway, because wouldn't you know it, there’s no way to go backwards! See, that’s how you can tell whether a racing game takes itself seriously or not. If you’re not able to turn around and go the wrong way, not that you’d ever want to, then that is not a good sign as far as realism is concerned. Yeah, the controls are all right; since steering is handled by tilting the Wii Remote, you can get it to work with one of those Wii Wheel contraptions. Although woe betide you if you choose the "loose" steering setting.

It's tough to consistently win races at first, but you might get somewhere once you start bolting on some upgrades. Then again, maybe not, since the computer never uses nitros if you haven't yet installed them on your car, for example. With or without the help of nitro, the competition's rubberband AI is so prevalent that, while it's easy to place in the top three, getting first place has more to do with luck than skill. ...Or so it would seem. It helps if you don't hit traffic, no surprises there, or if you double-tap the throttle and perform a car flip over a rival, which apparently gives you a speed boost. Let me say that again: victory in this game depends not on traditional driving skill, but on mindlessly mashing the accelerator button. See, this is why the rest of the world thinks Americans are stupid: our racing games have less to do with substance than spectacle.

I wasn't kidding about that word "nitrous" blocking the screen every time you use a boost.

The graphics in the Cruis'n series have always been a little behind the curve, and this game is no exception. Even though the traditional pop-up from the earlier Cruis'n games is a thing of the past, there is still a bit of slowdown at the start of a race, where all eight cars are on screen at once. The problem doesn't rear its ugly head much afterwards; on the contrary, Cruis'n on the Wii adds a little motion blur effect not used in the arcade version of The Fast and the Furious. But more glaring than any technical aspects is the garish and dorky presentation. For example, when you trigger a nitro, your speed boost is accompanied by a male announcer shouting "Nitrous!" and the word "Nitrous" scrolling across the screen. Because... extreme? Even worse is the heavily-used female announcer, whose eternally seductive tone ends up becoming a turn-off. My good lady, if you're voice-acting like you're in a porn film, just make one already.

All in all, this game's attitude is phony much in the way that Holden Caufield is not, but even without the embarrassing theme, the game still isn't worth playing. The experience is less a true driving simulation and more a 3D representation of one of those old Atari racers. And even though the features which made the arcade version such a guilty pleasure are present in full force, namely the upgrade system, the actual gameplay will leave you bored long, long before you manage to fully upgrade even one of the cars, much less all of them. If that should serve as inspiration for you to switch to a more fulfilling racing experience, then by all means, succumb to those urges.

Positives:
- The ability to upgrade cars.

Negatives:
- The inconsistent, unconvincing physics.
- The boring track design.
- The severe rubberband AI.
- Over-the-top lame presentation.

Control: 3 out of 5
Design: 1 out of 5
Audiovisual: 1 out of 5
Value: 1 out of 5
The Call: 35% (F)