A neat old racing title with a wide variety of Ford cars. On sale for $0.74 for 3 hours after the writing of this post I also started doing a gameplay series on it
Ahhh... I remember this game... Tons of fun on my original Xbox I used to just fool around and not even do the races just because
I remember playing this game on my old DSI, that was many hours wasted on this game, but I loved it, I think i still have the game.
I have to say, that game looks pretty embarrassing for something that came out in 2004 - about 3-5 years behind in terms of graphics, gameplay, and overall quality. It reminds of Need for Speed High Stakes in multiple ways (though that isn't necessarily a bad thing) and of the good old days of racing games, before everything became free-roaming and city-based, when course artists could get away with being silly and no one would see anything wrong with it.
I ended up buying the game for my PS2 at this wonderful store in Anchorage that sells games for everything from Atari to the newest systems. It looks a lot better than in the videos, and it's surprisingly well done, too, with AI that's genuinely good and genuinely difficult to beat on Hard. Also features some very well-designed courses (though the extremely rough off-road courses can become annoying sometimes), my favorite being The Railroad, with Lost Village probably a close second. My biggest beef so far is probably the balance of performance - in the Performance category, for example, the Mustang Mach III seems to be a runaway class killer - but in this particular game, I don't think that's too much of a problem. I'm currently testing cars in 5-lap Time Attacks at The Railroad (even if I'm not the best or most consistent driver ever). I got a 1:28.14 in the '66 Mustang, which I noted has rather loose (but not excessively so) steering and handling and not the best grip. Didn't watch the speedometer close enough to get a feel for its top end. In the '46 Convertible, I got a 1:28.12, but cut that nasty downhill right-hander quite badly; I probably could have gone that fast or faster without cutting that corner, but on my next (and last) lap I went through that corner very tepidly trying to avoid cutting it again but still stay on the road at exit. In general, the '46 has a lot more understeer than the Mustang, and possibly more grip, though it can still slide. The '49, meanwhile, seems to be some kind of class killer, as I got a 1:26.70 on The Railroad on a still imperfect lap (tepid run though the downhill right, but a cut or near-cut in the dogleg right leading to the freeway section), and was beating the Mustang and '46 even on my terrible first lap. The '49 has very sharp turn-in (during which it can lose quite some speed) followed by understeer, but does seem to have a lot of grip, which might explain why it's so fast. The '49 Coupe (which is actually a Mercury) is surprisingly not a simple clone of the '49, it seems to have sharper, twitchier steering but also more overall grip; to compensate, its acceleration seems slightly but noticeably slower (some of it might be gearing-related). I'm not sure how much of the difference between the '49 Coupe and the '49 is down to placebo effect, but I do know that I had to put out some serious effort to get close to the '49's best time in the '49 Coupe (best I got was a 1:28.79, albeit with a slightly botched run through the downhill right), even though from a certain perspective it stands a chance to be faster than the '49. Its acceleration must be slower than my impromptu acceleration/speed test (watch the vehicle's speed when crossing onto the Railroad freeway and when crossing off of it with the smoothed turns possible) indicates - perhaps the gearing has something to do with this, as I do seem to shift into 4th at a much lower speed in the '49 Coupe than in the '49 - if the first three gears are shorter, but Fourth is the same, then the car might end up out of its powerband when you shift into Fourth, though even that seems to have little effect on the speeds seen at different points around the course. The 1970 Capri seems to accelerate quickly, but its handling is a gripless, wildly fishtailing mess. It seems to get harsher Time Attack targets as well. The best I could get out of it was a 1:28.20, but there's probably more in it, as I wasted a lot of time drifting the low-grip corner in a vain attempt to get closer to the apex. I suspect if I could get my turn-in points and entry speed exactly right, it could turn in a much faster time. Added turn numbers and some names to a map of The Railroad; it's cropped from a screenshot someone else took because I couldn't find a better map. The downhill right I keep talking about is Turn 9 (Death Drop).
I didn't know this was an actual game you can buy. I remeber playing this on those driving arcades for few euros on a cruise ship.
