Okey dokey. When this one loaded up I thought ‘Wipe Out with bikes’ in fact I’m sure that was probably the way it was pitched to the publishers!

First choose a rider and after racing around a few tracks it’s time to pledge your allegiance and choose a team to race for.

The tracks sure look pretty, and are well designed allowing for sensations of extreme speed. Each track also allows you multiple routes which make the races just a little bit more interesting.

It seems as though a lot of imagination has been put into the tracks varying as they do from Amazonian locations (in the future!) where you can ride up waterfalls to deep space mining stations on Saturn where (no people don’t live to be 205! – one for the Stevie Wonder fans out there) bikes race in zero atmosphere (almost an f. zero atmosphere you may say).

To begin with you will find your bike a little unresponsive at high speeds and I found myself crashing my way round the circuits. However as you progress up through the various classes your bike gets upgraded so it all feels that little bit smoother.

Darkfader says the tracks soon wear off and get easy.

An interesting feature of the game is the various goals you also have to complete during the race such as destroying an opponents advertising boards to completely destroying other opponents.

As with Wipe Out there are numerous weapons available to blast your opponents off the track. Pick up the weapon items as you head about the track – the more you pick up, the more powerful the weapon at your disposal.

From the ‘vampire’ weapon which drains opponents energy to ‘deathstrikes’ which instantly destroys opponents bikes. These weapons are unlocked by completing races and race goals alike.

There are various other race modes, you can race in extreme conditions such as rain storms or dust storms (which can get a little confusing when you can’t see the track) or all out death matches where all the riders are out to destroy each other

Overall I found the game easy to get into, you can wing your way round the tracks hitting barriers without destroying your bike and still finish in a good position (unlike Wipe Out which punishes careless pilots mercilessly for crashing at ridiculous speeds).

Although I found it a lot of fun to begin with, it didn’t take long to get bored of the sheer repetitiveness and with the ease at which I got around the tracks (basically hold down accelerate and steer).

Which takes us back to where we started – Wipe Out with bikes! Great fun for a couple of hours but it doesn’t do anything to expand the futuristic racer genre. Could do better.

6/10

Darkfader

GAME SCREENSHOTS