L.A. Rush

Over the past few years, the Rush racing game series has been really fun to play. While the popularity of these games are not as big as say the Need for Speed franchise, Rush still captured the hearts of many diehard racing fans. When I heard that they were going to make a new game with its setting in Los Angeles I couldn’t wait to see what ideas the developers cooked up. Now that I have had some ample time playing this game I can tell you that this game will definitely disappoint you. Read on to find out why.

Players will take on the shoes of Trikz Lane, who has achieved a true superstar status in the underground racing world thanks to his unique driving style. A few days before a huge money street racing event, a rival has stolen and hidden his 35 prized vehicles. If Trikz wants to retain his superstar status it is up to him to compete in many difficult high-stakes races to locate and retrieve his stolen cars. Are you up this challenge?

There are two different modes players can participate in: Story mode and Quick Race. The story mode will put players into the shoes of Trikz Lane who must find and recover his stole cars. Throughout this mode players will have to join different street races, upgrade you cars, and acquire your stole cars. This mode is the real meat of the game that will have you playing for a while.

If you want to just get a quick racing fix then you will want to get into a quick race. There are five different races you can particulate in. First is just a normal point A to B race. Next is Cruise where your minimum speed is locked so you will have to reach a certain area without dropping below that speed. After that you can take on many of the game's different missions, and in order to get more missions you will have to beat the ones currently available. If you want to just play around in the city you can choose the Roam mode to see what the city is all about. Finally there is the Lowrider events that pits you against another car to see who can get the highest bounce and get the car to raise the most.

The driving for this game is pretty fun, as the game really conveys the sense of speed as you are racing. You will especially get the feeling of how fast you are driving when you pass all of the other cars on the road. This all leads up to the bad - the amount of cars that this game has is a killer. When you are racing you will always have to be mindful of running red lights or going on the other side of the median because a car can come out of nowhere and screw up a race for you. While this is making the game more real it really becomes a nuisance because you will be stuck seeing the crash scene again and losing precious time.

This brings me to another point since this is a racing game, L.A. Rush features a lot of different crash scenes. When you collide with an object with a lot of force, gamers will be treated with a really well done crash scene, showing off the in-game effects. The problem with this is that every time you crash, no matter what skill or setting you put the game on, you will have to see this crash scene in slow motion. This gets extremely annoying if you are in the middle of a race and crash a couple of times and being forced to look at these slow motion crash scenes that taunt you at how bad you are at driving. All you want to do is get back to the game and you will see your smashed-up car for what seems to be an eternity.

Another huge fault with this game is the computer AI. I do not know how to put this any other way then to say that the AI in this game is really cheap and it feels like it “cheats” in order to win some of the races. The biggest annoyance I have is that the computer can usually avoid almost all collisions yet at the same time causes collisions that you will be destined to crash into. Then there are the cops that will come out of nowhere while you are racing and stop at nothing to get you to crash so they can catch you, and they don’t seem to go after the computer drivers as much as you. While this is not a bad thing, the number of cops that will come chasing after you is a seemingly infinite amount, which in no way is near an accurate representation of how many there really are. I do not mind the cops that come after you but when you see that many at once it just ruins it.

When I heard that the developers included West Coast Customs in the game, I thought that I was in for a treat when it was time to customize my car. When it was time to do some car customization I was shocked to find out that all I do is drive up to the West Coast Customs then the customization is done for me with out any interaction on my part. Now I know that this is how it is on Pimp My Ride, but the concept here doesn’t work as well. If I am going to be spending my time racing around with this car I really would like a say on what things go on my car. This is one of the best parts about games of this nature is changing and tuning the cars you drive yourself, but the fun was taken out of this game, which is a very sad thing.

The graphics for L.A. Rush are pretty good. All of the cars are pretty well detailed and sport some nice graphical effects, especially the reflections. What the game really does is convey the sense of speed with the motion blur effect as you are racing around the town, and even more so if you are using some Nitro. Even though the crashes are highly annoying the game makes the crashes look really good with pieces from the cars flying everywhere.

The place where the graphics really shine is with the city of Los Angeles. The developers really were able to capture everything about this city and accurately represent it here in this game. If you know where many of this town’s landmarks are located you will be able to drive around until you find them. Driving around these landmarks are really nice and will make you feel good that the developers paid this much attention to detail while they were making this game.

L.A. Rush is rated Teen for language and mild violence. It supports in game Dolby Digital, Custom Soundtracks, and Xbox Live Awareness.

Gameplay: 5.5
The controls for this game are really well done. What is not so well done is the enemy AI, seeing the crashing scenes a billion times, and not even getting to properly customize the cars yourself.

Graphics: 7.6
L.A. Rush is a decent looking game that has some nice things going for it. The best thing in this regard is how they landscaped Los Angeles, which provides a massive playground to race around in.

Sound: 7.5
The music is this game is Ok, but at least the developers put in support for custom soundtracks. The voice acting is where this game gets high points as it is really well done, and includes all of the people from West Coast Customs (Pimp My Ride TV show).

Difficulty: Medium
L.A. Rush CPU players borderline on cheating. It seems that they can avoid a lot of crashes yet somehow causes crashes that will impact the player.

Concept: 5.9
The huge city to drive around is really nice, but this game really doesn’t offer players anything that they haven’t seen already

Multiplayer: 6.1
What happened to online mode here? You can play with your buddies on your couch, but that is not as fun as you have to split up the screen.

Overall: 6.0
If this game had a little bit longer development time and not rushed out for the holiday season, I think this game would have been a lot more fun to play. Instead we are stuck with what the developers presented us, which is a game that contains many flaws. Get this game only if you are a fan of the “Rush” series. Otherwise there are much better racing games out on the market.