Crash Time 3D
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3DS
| Crash Time 3D

When writing notes for my review of Crash Time 3D, I underlined the following sentence three times: "the wheels on the cars don't move". This wasn't by any means the only problem, but it seemed to sum the game up.

The throwaway story follows highway patrol cop Cobra11 on the autobahn as he attempts to thwart an evil crime lord's plans. The plot is doled out in pre-mission text, with no characterisation of any of the key players.

Out on the road you fulfil objectives such as racing from checkpoint to checkpoint, disabling a target by ramming it, protecting a convoy from pursuers, and avoiding sticks of dynamite as they're thrown at you.

Crash Time 3D welcomes careful drivers

The default handling model is straightforward enough: Circle Pad for movement, A to accelerate, B to brake, X to handbrake, and R shoulder to boost, which builds naturally over time. Y changes between the EMP and spike weapons you pick up as bonus items, and L trigger fires them.

Standard brakes are completely useless - only your handbrake is of any use as it initiates an awkward drift around the mostly gentle corners. Bizarrely, gently holding left will turn your car right, and vice versa.

The game also scales the speed of opponents to that of the automobile you're driving. So if you're in a slow ambulance you stand a better chance of locking up criminals than in a super car, as speed isn't a factor and the ambulance is easier to drive.

That's right: Crash Time 3D rewards you if you opt for the slower cars.

The oddities keep coming - especially when you come into contact with scenery or other vehicles. You'll grind up against walls that are a foot away, opponents can drive straight through traffic while you need to weave around it, and civilian cars often sink into the ground or float in the air.

When you smash into anything, it's as though your vehicle is made not of metal and glass but of meat. The sound of a bonnet hitting a brick wall is a disconcerting slap and squish noise rather than a metallic clang.

Face down in the car pool

As noted, the wheels on your car don't spin, and this aesthetic malaise is a constant. Everything is low resolution, and you can actually see where different blocks of the environment have been stitched together to form whole tracks.

The English translation isn't great. For instance, the game uses the word Mission and Challenge to describe the same thing: meta-objectives such as taking out a number of enemies or hitting high speeds frequently.

It also makes for some inadvertently hilarious text, such as the "Speedo Burster" reward - which I always thought was a poolside misadventure.

Crash Time 3D is a remarkably weak effort, with blindingly obvious flaws in its construction throughout. It looks like Asphalt Injection now has a serious contender on its hands for "worst driving game on handhelds 2012".

Crash Time 3D

This arcade racer manages to mess up the basics of racing game design, while looking and sounding poor at the same time
Score
Peter Willington
Peter Willington
Die hard Suda 51 fan and professed Cherry Coke addict, freelancer Peter Willington was initially set for a career in showbiz, training for half a decade to walk the boards. Realising that there's no money in acting, he decided instead to make his fortune in writing about video games. Peter never learns from his mistakes.