Bethesda Has Some Control Issues
A Review of XCar
Edmond Meinfelder
We’re a competitive species. Since the dawn of history, and perhaps before, we’ve been competing on foot, bike, sled, boat, plane, llama and car to settle the question: Who is the fastest? Of course, the answer we all want to give is, "Me!"
Bethesda enters the competitive race of the sales charts with X- Car, a 3-dimensional car racing simulation. We’re not talking Nascar, Formula 1, or Stock car racing here, but experimental racing. The game runs with the question, "What if people could race in near-unlimited auto configurations on a variety of tracks?" Before the answer, let’s walk about XCar and kick a few tires.
Bethesda’s vaunted X-Engine is reliable war-horse able to pull through, carrying a heavy load. Still, the engine which also brought us Daggerfall and upcoming 10th Planet, looks good but doesn’t suck your breath away like futuristic racer, POD. On some tracks, the seams between polygons are annoyingly apparent. I imagine a game designer is probably getting his/her hand slapped for doing unorthodox things with the track designer.
If XCar has beauty, it’s in the intricate layout of the tracks. Each track has trees, stands, pit stops and cones all placed with exquisite detail. As you race by the grandstands hearing the crowds roar, XCar delivers a racing thrill. As you speed about the track at 160 miles per hour, the venerable X-Engine’s weak- points vanish and XCar shines graphically.
Unfortunately, XCar stalls with control issues. Steering XCar with a joystick feels like driving from the back-seat. Around turns, sticking to the racing-line was tedious. The control of the joystick was coarse, causing too many time-wasting corrections. To their credit, Bethesda offers a fix in auto braking and steer help options. However, after turning these options on, you feel like a NASA monkey, getting a great ride, but not doing much.
Herein lies the tragedy. Control issues aside, XCar offers a quality experience. Don’t tell me I need to spend $90 on racing input gear -- I survived I-76 and POD just fine with my ThrustMaster. You might argue XCar has a more realistic physics model. Perhaps. What’s more important: realism or fun? I favor fun, with realism used only to entertain, not frustrate.
I’m no auto racing fanatic. The dazzling array of options to change your spoiler, engine, brakes and tires were lost on me. Customizing the car did not raise my checkered flag. After testing, I could feel some difference, but I lacked the savvy to understand the benefits of drawbacks of my decisions. Being the kind of guy to forego random actions of ignorance, perhaps the most important feature of the game passed me by at high-speed.
Another feature is the VCR. After a race, players can view their performance on the VCR from any number of views. Switching the cameras from the grandstands to the chase cars gave a fun cinematic feel. The VCR comes with telemetry data, displaying g-force, center of gravity, speed, exceeded traction limits among other things. Combining telemetry data with the VCR playback is a useful tool to improve performance, but it doesn’t solve the control issues.
To anyone speeding out to buy XCar, I raise the yellow flag and signal caution. The graphics work, but fail to breath-take and the control is tedious. The auto setup is complex and not for the racing illiterate. The pluses, quality track design and good overall race-car feel, fail to redeem XCar’s shortcomings. Bethesda crosses the finish line with XCar, but misses the winner’s circle.
Gamer's Zone Scorecard
| Product: | XCar |
| Company: | Bethesda Softworks |
| Cost: | $49.99 |
System Requirements:
Pentium-90, 16 meg RAM, Dos 5.0 (or later),
4x CD-ROM, mouse, joy-stick, DirectX 5.0 (or greater),
57 megs of hard drive space.
Breakdown:
Fun Factor 2
Graphics 3
Sound 3
Interface 3
Replayability 1
Overall Score:
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