The Italian Job

Lately there has been a pattern with movie to video game conversion: they all are sub par. Can any game break this never-ending trend? The Italian Job was just released for the Xbox console, and while it isn’t the worst game, it really isn’t the best either. To be perfectly honest, I did have a lot of fun while playing this game, but the main problem is that this particular game feels like it should have been an arcade game, and not a full length console one. Read on to find out why!

For those of you who did not see this great movie, here is a short rundown of it because the game is based directly off the same events. Charlie Cooker is in a gang of highly specialized thieves. Their target is a safe that contains gold brinks that are worth millions of dollars. After they successfully pull off this job, Steve Bandell shoots and kills John Bidger, the old man who was going to retire after this heist. Charlie and the rest of his gang are stuffed in their van, and pushed into a freezing lake in the Alps. A year later we find out that Charlie and everyone else survived and are out for Steve’s blood. Steve has changed his last name, and is living a life of luxury in LA. The time has finally come to get even with Steve, the question remains can you do it?

The Italian Job has several modes of play: story, circuit racing, stunt driving, and free roam. The Story mode takes play through fifteen missions as Charlie and his posse of thieves try to take down Steve and take back their gold. Players will be able to control myriads of different cars that each handle differently throughout the wild streets of LA. As players complete each mission, they are given a grade, the higher the grade, the more bonuses that players will unlock. Circuit racing is for people who want to take a drive around town with other cars to see who is the best driver. Stunt driving allows players to complete a course without getting off the coarse. The object is to see how many insane stunts can be done in the time limit. The last mode is free roam, which allows players to just take a stroll around the streets of LA without worry about any missions or time limits.

The game has a very arcade feel to it; to put it bluntly it feels a lot of like Crazy Taxi. This is a good thing, as the cars are really fluid and great to drive. Throughout the course of the game, players will have the option to drive more than just the MINI’s, and each car feels slightly different from the others form accelerating to braking. The missions are easy enough to figure out, get to point B from point A in a certain time limit.

The Italian Job looks pretty good. What is an extreme disappointment is the lack of car damage. I crashed in to a lot of things, and the only thing that happens is the car smokes for a while. Other than that minor complaint, the game has a lot going for it, crisp graphics, high polygonal counts, and no slowdown in sight. The environments have a lot of detail as well and are nicely textured.

This game supports in game Dolby Digital, which is a good thing, but this game doesn’t support custom sound tracks. This is a huge disappointment as this game would have been perfect for them. Instead we are stuck listening to some tunes that get old after a while. The sound effects are nicely done, but they do lack the “oomph” that other car games have.

The Italian Job is rated T for Teen for mild violence. It supports in game Dolby Digital and HDTV 480p support.

Gameplay 8.0
It has tight controls extremely easy to learn and master within minutes.