Metropolis Street Racer is simply a fantastic driving simulation and competes with the best out there. Sega has once again proven to be a reliable game developer...

Metropolis Street Racer is a fully fledged driving simulator and can be compared to the likes of Gran Turismo and Gran Turismo 2 on the Playstation with better graphics. It boasts realism and is for gamers that want a taste of what it's like to drive a real sports car. And although the game has it's minor problems, as a whole, you can't do much better than MSR. Sega did it again.

Features:

3 World Class cities accurately depicted including London, Tokyo and San Francisco.
40+ Sports Cars from real manufacturers including Mazda, Ford, Mercedes, Toyota and many others.
Real-Time clock synchronized with the game.
In-dash radio with weather forecasts, news, and a varied soundtrack depending on your location.
Time-Trial, Championship and 2-Player VS split screen modes.

Graphics: Tasty. This is what I'm talking about. Sweet tracks, great sense of speed, great looking cars and smooth gameplay. And while it's an unfair comparison because of the system specs, Metropolis Street Racer puts the original Gran Turismo and Gran Turismo 2 for the aging Playstation to shame in terms of overall look and polishing. I didn't notice any pop-up and you can see far ahead of you which is important for all driving games and considering how good the game looks, this was a nice surprise. The cities are magnificently detailed. You'll whiz by Big Ben in London, San Francisco Bay and the stunning lights on a Tokyo night. The cars are also flawlessly detailed. Car-buffs will instantly see the time Sega spent on making MSR as close to the real thing as possible. The cars themselves can be tailored. You can give yourself your own personalized plates, change the paint color, chose a convertible or one with a top, and even tint your windows.

Control: Ahh, slurpy tight control on Metropolis Street Racer with cars that control and behave like their real counterparts, yum! MSR is 80% driving simulation and the 20% arcade feel. You're not going to get away with going 140MPH around a corner in this baby, but you might get away with 100MPH. I have to admit, MSR is a frustrating game and penalizes you for minor mistakes and the clock is not your only concern to move on to the next round. The nifty point system is based on Kudos. Kudos is a build-up on skill points that earns your right to get to new tracks, new cars and new challenges. You earn kudos by avoiding obstacles, beating the clock and driving with style. Kudos are a cool feature for earning your right to move on, but penalizes you for minor mistakes. For example, if you braze an opponents vehicle, you lose Kudos points, and more times than not, you'll have to restart the track and try again if you want to continue. Nickin' a guardrail on a corner will always cause a penalty. A little more leniency would have made the game a lot more appealing to gamers who just want to beat the clock. Be that as it may, the satisfaction of driving flawlessly pays off. You'll earn enough kudos to get a bright shiny new car and personalize it in the garage and be able to take it on trial runs in the Time-Trial modes. You're garage can hold three cars and you can switch between races. I would have like to have seen a little more customization in the garage. You can't change your transmission, you can't replace your tires and you can't customize any internal components. But the driving experience is what this game is about, and the new cars that your earn suffice because all give you a different driving experience from the next.

Although it really has nothing to do with control, it's more than deserving of a mention. Metropolis Street Racer is in-sync with the Dreamcast Clock. So if you live in Cleveland Ohio and play the game at 11 o-clock at night, it will be 8PM in San Francisco when you race on the track. Playing at different times can affect the difficultly level significantly. Racing at night is a lot more challenging, but once again, the real time clock is a great idea and should be done for all driving games for now on. It would also be nice having this feature for sports games too.

Sound: To add to the realism, Metropolis Street Racer offers access to the in-dash radio. You'll be able to hear the weather report in San Francisco, the news in London and a commercial ad in Tokyo. It's amazing the variety of the stuff that was jammed in to the CD. The music is also very plentiful and, of course, varies from the different locations. From rock, to country, to techno, it's all here. Something for everybody, and that's always a difficult to thing to offer in any video game. The engine noises all deserve a mention. I personally don't know if the engine sounds are accurately recorded from their real counterparts, but I can honestly say, each car sounds different from the next.

Final Call: This is a brilliant driving simulator. The big standout features are the fully licensed cars, different overall feel for all the 40+ vehicles and the amazing graphics. Where MSR falls a bit short is in the picky kudos system. It penalizes you for minor mistakes and is frustrating for gamers who don't have a lot of patience. But the satisfaction of perfecting every curve, every challenge and every track, pays off in the end as you will be graced with a new, more powerful vehicle. The graphics are incredible, the control is tight and the ability to earn new cars and new routes within the big-3 cities, adds major replay value. If you have doubts about this title, don't, Metropolis Street Racer is a must have game. But it now.

John - reviewer24@aol.com

Overall Rating:

The Good and the Bad:
+ Incredible graphics. Sweet car-models.
+ Licensed cars, Mazda, Ford, Toyota and many more.
+ Kudos system.
+ A tremendous variety of sound.
+ 2-Player mode is a blast.

- Kudos system is almost too challenging and penalizes for the smallest mistakes.


Reviewed by: John