Park or Die

If we'd be given the choice 'park or die' back when we took our driving test, there's every chance some of us wouldn't have failed it twice on the parallel parking bit. There's nothing quite like facing imminent death to boost concentration and sharpen up the senses.

Park or Die's title, however, doesn't refer to driving tests or threatening examiners. It actually refers to an extreme sport in which the sort of petrol-head teenagers who normally hang about in multiplex cinema car parks compete in fast cars for, er, parking spaces.

Parking is everything to these people. Your reverse parking skills are what get you respect on the street and weaving through a set of cones before slamming your sports car into a space so tight you'd struggle to slide a sheet of A4 on the either side of your wing mirrors is exactly what impresses the ladies in town.

If you're not thinking this sounds completely ridiculous you're probably well on your way to accept that a game based around competitive parking isn't actually such a bad idea. And it's not. In fact, it results in a driving title than shuns your typical races and concerns itself instead with precision driving.

Which would be fine if the controls in the game were as precise as they need to be. Unfortunately they're pretty wretched and are ultimately what prevents Park and Die being a much better game.

The game is viewed from the top down, which gives you a perfect display of the obstacle courses of cones, cars and other objects such as exploding fire hydrants that you need to manoeuvre around in each of the 25 missions.

The steering, however, isn't as intuitive, the problem being that instead of directing the vehicle from the driver's perspective, you need to push buttons depending on which direction you want to go on the screen. This is presumably because it grants greater freedom for driving backwards and forwards but it's incredibly unworkable for trying to ease in and out of small gaps.

It's very easy to get completely wedged in somewhere or just have to spend valuable moments trying to work out which button is going to move your car forwards. When the time limits for each level are challenging and knocking over one measly cone lands you a five-second penalty, just a tiny nudge the wrong way can end a game. And, as you can imagine, this leads to considerable frustration.

Which is unfortunate because Park and Die could otherwise have been very enjoyable. Control issues aside, the time limits set for each level are actually well-judged and by halfway through they call for multiple tries to get driving lines and techniques exactly right. Success is tainted by the awkwardness of the commands but it's still very satisfying when you do eventually nail one.

Each level offers a nice fresh challenge, too. One has a series of parking spaces numbered 1-4 for you to drive into against the clock, while another gives you three laps to clear and the goal of getting 40,000 points. Point scoring is done by hitting '*' to go into a handbrake turn then skidding around corners without hitting anything for as long as possible. As long as you keep going, the score keeps racking up. (We should also mention the nitro, which is useful for clearing vast car parks to reach one parking space after another and is triggered by pressing '#'.)

Adding to the game's positives is the fact the main Story mode doesn't contain all of the action. There are extra modes taken from the main game, such as Slalom Challenge and Destruction Challenge – some playable immediately and others unlocked for completing the game. No mean feat seeing as some of the levels can easily take ten increasingly irritating attempts to get right.

There's plenty in it, then, and the content's well thought out – particularly in terms of the challenges. But we can't ignore those pesky controls. You could argue that attempting to master them adds to the experience but it's more likely they'll cause most people to stop playing prematurely. Park or Die might have a title to stand it out from the crowd but sadly it doesn't quite have the gameplay to match.