NitroStreet Racing

You could blame the numerous street racing games out there – Midnight Club, Burnout, Need for Speed – for the number of 17-year-olds who seem to accumulate in Asda car parks every Friday night to rev up their Vauxhall Corsas. Or you could praise them for being part of a genre that has spawned some of the best racing games ever made. We've certainly occupied more than our fair share of commutes on Burnout.

NitroStreet Racing most definitely makes the case for praise. This Gameloft racer has all the events, cities, cars and high-octane police chases of a home console game. You can even cruise around the city between events and visit a garage to buy extra kit for your vehicles. As well as paint them green and install orange neons, of course.

How much has been packed into this game is hugely impressive. Some elements, like the police chases and drifting technique might not be particularly comprehensive or impact much on the gameplay, but plenty of other elements are very well realised.

But first things first. Golden Beach is the district where you begin the game, with races taking place along sunny coasts. Once a number of events have been won in this area, the Red Dragon district is unlocked, where races take place at night. There are five districts in total, all with a number of different types of race to complete. Naturally, as you progress, the difficulty level gradually ramps up, so while early races barely require much skill, later on your AI opponents get nastier and more cunning.

Winning races earns you cash, which in turn can be spent on new cars and on kits to fine-tune your mean machine to greater levels of speed and handling. Far from simple cosmetic differences, the ten cars in the game all behave noticeably differently. Most obvious is that they get faster and hitting the right corner at the correct time becomes more difficult. The steering itself isn't a precision art but dodging oncoming traffic, following the map and knowing when to take down rival cars with a few crafty nudges certainly is.

Some of the events don't even call for normal driving skills. The Drag Race, for instance, is controlled by hitting '5' during the split second your rev meter is in the green section, indicating a perfect gear change. You then simply use left and right to change lanes to overtake opponents, while keeping track of gearshifts. The Sprint Race, meanwhile, is a checkpoint-based affair against the clock that tests your navigation skills, and there's a Beat 'em All option where you simply have to ram all the other cars off the road.

In terms of content, then, there's little that disappoints. And the general car handling, too, is near spot-on. Accelerating is taken care of automatically and pushing forwards (or hitting '2') triggers a burst of nitro, while pushing back applies the brakes. There's also a nifty u-turn option activated with '0', which is a considerate addition that's particularly needed for the checkpoint races should you miss a turning.

The drifting is a bit flimsy, though, seeing as corners can be taking quite easily without worrying about it, and the aforementioned police chases are more for effect than anything else. If you smack into too many passing cars, you light up letters on a 'Wanted' meter. Once they're all illuminated, the cops give chase while the screen flashes disconcertingly, but they fail to do much once they've caught up with you and like all the other cars are easily turned onto their roofs with a hefty nudge.

Still, none of this affects how enjoyable the rest of the racing remains. Thankfully, it also all looks stunning, with sprawling background scenery and plenty of detail. The sense of speed isn't massive, true, but any faster would have you plummeting regularly into traffic. Unlike the cars in the game, this game requires almost no customisation for improvement – it's high-speed fun from start to finishing line.