It'll blow you away (Metropolis Street Racer (DC))

Member Name: MR.COATES

Product:	Metropolis Street Racer (DC)
Date:	08/01/01 (133 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Incredibly detailed, packed full of features.

Disadvantages: No replays.

I LOVE driving games.
They are without a doubt my favourite genre when it comes to gaming.
I’ve loved and played the best: Grand Prix 3, Toca 2, Gran Turismo, Sega Rally......the list goes on and on.

Then came this.

If you’re a Dreamcast owner it’s very unlikely that you’ve been able to escape the publicity (I don’t want to use the word ‘hype’ here) surrounding this title.
In fact, this game was supposed to be one of the first titles on the Dreamcast.
It was originally going to be out just after the Dreamcast’s October ’99 launch date but it didn’t happen.
Months went by and still nothing happened.
There were fears at one point that the game would never be released but behind closed doors the creators (Bizarre Creations) were making sure that this game was the best of its kind.

Boy were they right to do so.

This is without a doubt THE BEST driving game I have ever played and yes that includes the incredibly good Gran Turismo.

You’ve got the cars, the racing locations and most importantly – it plays well too.

Bizarre have been very clever indeed and the end result is a combination of simulation and arcade fun which is likely to appeal to hardcore driving game fans but also the general games player.


The idea is to engage in street races (against other drivers and against the clock).
The more races you win/complete, the further you progress into the game.
Sounds simple enough, but there’s more to it than that.
To progress to the next chapter (25 in all), you need to get a certain amount of points – in this case known as ‘Kudos’. You earn Kudos by winning races and showing off on the way round – taking a corner is fine, but fling it round with a handbrake turn and you’ll earn a few extra Kudos.
You’ll get a message appear on screen to tell you when y
ou’ve done it too.
As you complete each chapter new cars become available but you’ll have to earn it by completing a timed challenge. Beat the time and you get the car.



You get to race around three cities: San Francisco, Tokyo and London.
That may not sound like much, but each city is actually broken down into various mini courses all varying in length.
The Dreamcast clock also comes into play – if it’s morning here, it’ll be the middle of the night in San Francisco so if you race here it’ll be light – there it’ll be dark. Simple but clever.
You don’t actually get to drive around the city as you wish (not until you’ve unlocked all of the races anyway).
The three cities look absolutely stunning too.
Each one has been meticulously re-created using video footage and thousands of photographs.
The end result?
You end up with virtually the real thing and that is not even a slight exaggeration.
If you happen to know any of the featured cities reasonably well, you’ll see that I’m not joking.

The only minor gripe with the cities is that there are no people walking around – but you’ll be flying around the streets so fast you’ll probably hardly notice (or even care for that matter – this is a driving game, not a people watching game).

You can, of course, adjust the time of day and the type of weather and this can make a big difference to the racing/driving.
Another small complaint here – when the weather is set to misty/foggy the effect is actually not quite right and I can’t put my finger on exactly why/how. It’s a minor gripe but hey, I don’t want you thinking that this game is perfect!

So, let’s break it down a bit.

Graphics.

Stunning, simple as that.
These guys have obviously spent many, many hours making this game look the business and hats o
ff to them – it looks beautiful.
The cities (as already mentioned) are fantastic, it seems even the most ridiculous details are all there.
In London you’ll see the Millenium wheel and as you race around Tokyo you’ll notice that some of the enormous illuminated advertising boards flash to attract your attention.
Even the shops look like the real thing – you’ll soon notice the occasional McDonalds and HMV.

The cars are equally great looking. From the very beginning with the MGF until the end with the car on the cover (Vauxhall’s VX-220) – all of them look exactly like their real – life counterparts.
You can choose the colour (all from the official manufacturers specifications of course), tint your windows and even change your number plate to what you want. Yes that means there is plenty of potential fun with plates like P 4 NTS and of course MUCH more offensive if you want


Sound

The environment (road noise, thunder etc) is perfectly acceptable, there is a healthy crunching noise on gravel, screeching on tarmac and if it’s raining it sounds just right.
The cars sound individual enough, some of them sound pretty damn mean!!
Another complaint materialises here – the car horn. Awful. Some of them sound OK, but most sound pretty pathetic, but again it’s a minor gripe so it can be forgiven.

The best part of the ‘sound’ is without a doubt the in-game music system.

Instead of having your bog standard tracks, you actually have a radio to play around with (nothing cheap here either, nice Kenwood i.c.e here my son – PUKKA.
Sorry about that, let’s not get carried away with the boy racer thing here.
The radio is a cracking idea, you can select one of several cd’s (which have pretty decent tracks on actually) or you can choose to have the radio switched on and it works VERY well.
You have a ‘pro
per’ radio broadcast (three in each city) and the main difference is the type of music, the broadcast actually sounds authentic.
The main music types are Jazz, Rock and Dance and the tracks are really genuinely bearable.
In some games the cheesy guitar riffs drive you nuts after just a few plays but the soundtrack here is of a pretty good quality.
They’ve even gone as far as making the radio broadcasts being sensitive to your driving environment – drive under a bridge and the signal fades. This really helps to make each game more like taking a real car out for a drive.




Attention to detail is one thing that stands out more than anything else here – you get a game which feels like a finished article because there is so much depth to it.
There aren't any replays here but that would probably be my main complaint - so you can see that this game is almost perfect.

I LOVE this game, it really is superb and has for me become the game which all others will be judged against.

If you have a Dreamcast then you MUST it now – it’s in the top 5 of my favourite Dreamcast games (alongside Virtua Tennis, Soul Calibur, Shenmue and F355 Challenge).

This will become a classic – you heard it here first.

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