High Speed 3D
|
| High Speed 3D

It has to be said, my first play-through of HeroCraft's bold new racer, High Speed 3D, was a rather surreal experience.

Playing on the box at the time was one of the Fast and Furious movies - a tale of a street racer trying to make his name in amongst the gangs on the road flashing across my LCD screen - and there I was, on my wee phone, doing the exact same thing.

Adding some semblance of narrative isn't all that common in mobile racers, but High Speed 3D attempts to go further than the average title, giving glossy 3D visuals the kind of foundations players of console outings Need for Speed or Midnight Club might be more in tune with. In terms of the mobile, this is a new kind of racing sim.

High Speed's career mode is effectively split in two, with both championship tests and the more offbeat street racing offering a sense of progression absent from many a racer. Both involve bolstering the street presence of the Lightning gang, each task thrown at you gradually schooling you through each element of racing as well as moving the story forward.

Coming first isn't always the sole goal, for instance, with High Speed's inventive races employing targets such as finishing without any damage to your car or drifting through each course, Tokyo style.

The plot forms the thread that links all of these challenges and, on the whole, is an involving one, charging you with reclaiming the streets for the Lightning gang after your brother - a street racing stalwart - is injured in a race. The game flips you from championship contests to the street races and back again, each test acting as a chapter, coming with a whole heap of plot to push you forward.

The problem is, while the structure and the dressing of High Speed 3D might be expansive and fresh, the actual races that make up gameplay aren't. If anything, this is a step back from some of the more rampant alternatives (Gameloft's Ferrari GT Evolution, complete with its bends and crooks, comes to mind) already on the market.

Though the game's street edge means civilian traffic features on both sides of the road, each hit slowing you down and filling your damage metre, it doesn't really add any sense of fear to proceeding.

Coming top of the pack usually revolves around the fairly sterile idea of playing it safe until your boost bar builds up (which it does, regardless of your actions), before laying it down with the '5' key and risking oncoming traffic to get a clear run at your rivals.

The drifting, no doubt included to spice up some of the races, is actually nothing more than a painful sidetrack you occasionally have to indulge in to meet your race targets. The tracks themselves just don't have the bends to do it justice, meaning you spend your time randomly swerving around in a circle using the '1' and '3' keys purely to hit those goals rather than actually aid your racing.

It's just another instance in which High Speed 3D shows much promise but doesn't actually deliver in practice. The car never really connects to the road, the courses look flash but drive all too gently, and the competition act as nothing more than placeholders, marking off your progress through the pack rather than offering up any real sense of challenge.

It's a real dampener and a massive missed opportunity given High Speed 3D gets so much else right. This is the kind of model that future arcade racers would do well to follow, serving up a real hulking great game rather than a quick fix with just a couple of tracks.

But the courage High Speed shows to try something new can't overcome the fact that the races themselves feel like a regression. High Speed 3D has got the wheels to race into the lead, but sadly, it takes to the track with far too tame an attitude to stay out front for long.

High Speed 3D

Coming to the table with a fresh outlook and a huge, expansive street racing career mode, High Speed 3D's actual track performance fails to live up to its billing, with bland and lengthy tracks combining with sterile competition to ensure that this is two steps forward, three steps back
Score
Keith Andrew
Keith Andrew
With a fine eye for detail, Keith Andrew is fuelled by strong coffee, Kylie Minogue and the shapely curve of a san serif font. He's also Pocket Gamer's resident football gaming expert and, thanks to his work on PG.biz, monitors the market share of all mobile OSes on a daily basis.