PSP World

Street Riders

While racing games are plentiful on the PSP there are not nearly as many mission-based driving titles. Clearly Ubi Soft hope to plug this gap in the market with their latest release Street Riders. The plot concerns a ruthless gang boss, Dupree, who is involved in a turf war with an up and coming hood, Cortez. You play the part of an ambitious underground driver, Buck, and it's with your help that Dupree hopes to regain his stronghold on the area and so control the variety of 'black market' goods and services. If you've played anything like this before though you'll realize that plot is insignificant when compared to gameplay and, of course, you’ll wonder if it's actually worth buying in the first place.

The ‘plot’ I've mentioned is there simply to pad out the Story Mode but there are other ways of tackling the action if you wish. The other main mode is 'Quick Fix' where you can enter any of the areas from the selection screen although you must first unlock the missions in the Story Mode before they become available. The missions themselves are pretty standard stuff so you'll start off by racing around a course with the objective being to come first. What makes a difference in Street Riders are the weapons, as rather than relying on your driving skills alone you can opt to 'take out' the car or SUV which is currently causing you the most trouble using a full arsenal of firepower. Simply drive over a weapon to collect it and then start shooting. Unfortunately some modes also allow your enemy to steal your current weapon, leaving you completely open and ducking for cover. Other missions feature an elimination element where the last racer over the line is disqualified until there is only one. There is a similar objective in another mission where you must travel further than your opponents by driving as fast and carefully as possible in order to keep passing through checkpoints. Another one places you in a multi-level car park challenging you to clear all vehicles on a given level before progressing to another.

One of the more difficult races involves you attacking the other cars with mines only so you can only ever attack opponents if they are behind you. Your real problem there is the fact that you also have to avoid explosives planted by other drivers. There are more variations of all of the above mentioned and it's clear that the developers have spent a considerable amount of time 'liberating' ideas from every other driving game on the market. Our favorite is the police chase though, which has you speeding down a heavily populated motorway with no weapons and only a handful of nitros to get you out of the more troublesome situations. This is truly heart pounding stuff and really quite refreshing after the succession of 'closed off' circuits. Multi-player fans are also catered for with one gamer taking control of the car whilst the other fires the weapon. In addition to this you can also enter tournaments with other players in a kind of death race arena or in a series of missions.

Visually Street Riders is not nearly as pretty as some of the other racers on the market for the PSP and cars can look positively jagged at times. It does feature some great lighting effects though with your car reflecting the various explosions and streetlights but if things start to move a little too slowly the cracks start to show. This is all saved to a certain extent by the FMV which appears every eight missions of so and once you've unlocked them you can view them again via the options menu.

The audio elements are split right down the middle and while the various music tracks are suitable for the game's setting and the cars sound as you'd expect them to, the voice acting is incredibly irritating. It's not that it's badly acted; it's just appallingly scripted. The lines themselves are generally delivered by Dupree who is clearly uneconomical with his words and rather than simply saying 'win this race' he'll spiral off into a succession of 'street' inspired sentences which appear to go on forever. I'm sure some people will enjoy this but the real petrol heads amongst you will just want to get on with it.

The control is actually very good indeed. You'll be comfortable with it in no time at all mainly due to the fact that it falls neatly between arcade and simulator making it all very intuitive. The only real problem is when you are cornering and in all the time we were playing Street riders we only managed to slide the car on a handful of occasions. The weapons are all aimed automatically but you still have to be aiming at the car in front (or behind) in order to do it any damage, which can be a challenge particularly in the car park sections.

When you add it all up there's little original about Street Riders and the game is a mixture between Chase HQ, Fired Up, Out Run and just about every other racing game you can think of from the last decade or so. While this is its strength to some extent, it's also its weakness when some of the gameplay becomes far too repetitive for it's own good. On the other had there’s lots of gameplay here and the missions deliver an increasing and rewarding challenge. The multiplayer elements are also enjoyable but it's the single player Story Mode that is Street Rider’s biggest selling point. Definitely recommended for racing fans that like a little danger in their otherwise peaceful commute.

By Andrew Blanchard