Review: Dragon Ball Z – Ultimate Tenkaichi (PS3)

Mobile, 2007; $4.00, 284KB
What is it?

Xtreme Dirt Bike is a motorcycle racing game that has you racing, battling, and otherwise competing with CPU-controlled drivers on tracks in five locations around the world. Place to earn money which you can spend to tune your bike with a surprising variety of options, including a number which are unlocked by playing through the different tracks.

Events fall into five categories: Race, Time Attack, Road Rage, Jump Competition, and Duel. Each location has four of these five events. Race is as it sounds: compete against the computer players and try to come in at least third. Time Attack has you competing with the other racers for the best lap time. Road Rage requires you to do as well as possible in a race while physically incapacitating most of the other drivers. That is to say, you hit them with a pipe or your foot. Jump Competition is a track with a series of high jumps, and you simply try to pull off as many stunts as possible while airborne. Duel is a boss battle, which really amounts to a one-on-one Race that ends with a quick bit of Road Rage.

How does it play?

The cramped keypad on my phone made getting the hang of the controls in this game the first challenge. Fortunately, the game reminds you of the controls on many of the load screens, so I learned them pretty quickly. Most of the buttons are for specific tricks you can do while airborne, in order to earn more money at the end of the race, so it’s not too hard to get started with just left, right, and boost. When those controls are down pat, learning the tricks becomes much easier.

Speaking of load screens… holy crap. The long load times for race results screens are amazing. I’d be inclined to blame this one on my phone, but I haven’t seen anything like this in the other games I’ve played.

Collision is a nuisance. The 3D presentation style makes for some concerns where lining up attacks against other bikes is concerned. Further, when you take down an opposing bike, it will often sprawl across the track in front of you. You’ll continuously bounce back off the bike, losing time in the race. It is an acquired skill to take down an opposing driver from as far away as possible, and then twist away from the wreck.

There is a meter in the game that fills as you boost or collide with obstacles. When the meter fills, you crash, losing a little bit of time. Healing items are provided generously in most instances, making this only a mild concern, so you’ll find yourself boosting a great deal, only letting off as the meter tops off. Overall, even the tracks that are rated “hard” are really rather easy. Unfortunately, the same goes for the boss Duels. I rarely lost a Duel, and they were always over in just a few seconds.

How does it look and sound?

The stills in the menus and the like in this game are really very nice. The title screen was surprisingly well done, and the menus are clear and readable without having everything huge. This is critical because there really are a lot of options in this game.

The in-race visuals are surprising. While my phone can’t really do 3D, this game does a fair job of emulating the feeling of motion and speed. I didn’t encounter a lot of slowdown, and even on the tiny little screen there were times when I felt like I really was tearing down a track in the middle of Siberia at an incredible speed. This is saying quite a bit for a game that looks like it could appear on a Game Boy Advance. I had one instance where the game came to a complete halt for about fifteen seconds, and I assumed it had crashed, which was disconcerting. The race continued on as if nothing had happened after that.

The sound is where all the corners were cut. While much of the music is passable, most the music you hear while racing is pretty average. The real tragedy is the complete lack of any sort of sound effects aside from a quick sound bite at the beginning of every race, something that would have been so much nicer to have while racing. There is the option to play the game without sound, and you are offered that at the very beginning every time you launch the game as well as in the options menu, which is nice.

How is the replay value?

There are many customization options for your vehicles, which eventually will include other types of bikes. I didn’t find the customization particularly necessary as the races were so easy with a stock bike, but I did have some fun adding new colors and styles to my inventory with my winnings. A Challenge Mode becomes unlocked partway through the game. This is effectively a second trip though some of the events in the game, end on end, with a running score throughout. It’s basically like any one of the cups in a Mario Kart game where an overall standing is shown at the end of each event. The game saves your progress through this, so you can play your way through one race at a time and then walk away. The variety of modes, even if they are just shuffled versions of the regular arcade mode, will give you at least the illusion of doing different things. I can see the game keeping some value even once everything has been unlocked, provided the difficulty can challenge you.

Is it worth it?

Four dollars is not a lot of money, and Xtreme Dirt Bike is a solid handheld racing game with a lot of options and modes. There’s a lot to do and a lot of fun to be had doing it. The lack of sound effects was a major let down, particularly considering what we were given in its place.

I was very surprised by the amount of advertising in the game for other Gameloft games. At one point in the game you have to actually view their list of games in the browser in order to unlock one of the locations. At the end of the game, I was pushed to buy a number of other Gameloft titles, each of which had a full-screen graphic showing something of what the game had to offer. I don’t consider this a problem with the game, but it was a surprise.

Xtreme Dirt Bike for mobile phones gets three point five out of five.

Check out Xtreme Dirt Bike and Gameloft’s other mobile games at the official site.