OCEAN CITY RACING

Don't waste your money, control is horrible, graphics are promising but everything is just so generic and low quality.

While i don't remember how i got this game, it's not as bad as the negative reviews make it to be. So here's the basic breakdown: [list] [*]Cars - 7/10 Enough variety (sports, muscle, SUV, go cart & truck) for a good choice of interesting rides, although i have not found the go cart yet and there's a nice truck at the beach with a nice engine sound. Cars look fairly good and sound realistic except that it's revving sound is too loud when downshifting, instead of the quiet sound of depressed clutch. [*]Map - 6/10 while not as big as a city, it's varied enough with interesting buildings (diner, playground, small pool, gas station, bridges, tunnel, culvert, car parks, etc.). [*]Graphics - 6.5/10 above average, better than a NFS clone called Midnight Midnight Outlaw: 6 Hours to SunUp but options to tweak are minimal; resolution, full-screen / windowed and 16 / 32 bit. [*]SFX - 7/10 engine sounds realistic, however i don't particularly like that most cars when slowing down, the engine brake sounds rather loud. The exception so far is the truck mentioned earlier. [*]Audio - 5/10 Cannot adjust sound levels. [*]Music - 7/10 i'm surprised that Kevin McLeod has made some songs with lyrics and the vocals are good. [*]Camera - 5/10 only 2; default and rotating with mouse. [*]Physics - 7/10 Haven't found any problems with car handling nor collision with objects. [*]UI - 6/10 simple and effective. [*]Stability - 7/10 no bugs so far [/list] So far these observations are in Free Roam mode, i've not raced yet; will update later. For a small inexpensive racing game, i think it's quite good; no need to grind for cars and you can just roam about to chill or get used to the different car handling. Overall [b]6.4[/b] good enough for the price IMO. [h2]Update [/h2] OK i tried the Race Mode and here's my experience: Starter car is a nice Lotus Esprit V8 or what looks like it with a nice 2 tone metallic violet purple colour which happens to be my favourite colour for a sports car. Too bad i didn't record the gameplay and there is no replay view. I wonder if the car you get to race with is random or if there is a progression. As you probably know, Lotus Esprit v8 has rather slow acceleration and relatively light compared to other cars in the line-up so it gets knocked around quite a bit. Anyway there are no stats for the cars in the game; this was garnered from experience in other racing games. Car handling is a little slippery especially if bumped by AI car but it's fair since AI cars also spun out. Lamp posts can be knocked down but trees can't. Camera is a little lacking because it doesn't swing with the turn making it a bit hard to see the road ahead but eventually you can get used to it. After a few retries i managed to keep collisions to a minimum and get 1st position; there is no difficulty level to choose from. It may seem a bit generous but i think [b]7/10[/b] is a reasonable score.