Crash Time is the worst demo ever to grace the Xbox 360 Marketplace. The graphics are decent but the demo makes no sense whatsoever, is terribly presented, has very poor gameplay mechanics and is generally just a mess of a game.
On loading the game up and once through the very cheap looking menus we’re given the mission briefing. The briefing says “TIP: try to to stop them. Try to get your oponents vehicle to spin. if you succeed your opponent will be confused. seize the opportunity to position yourself next to them”. A cut scene then plays which is basically a green car driving fast past a parked police car. We’re then treated to some appalling voice acting telling us to chase down the car to give them a ticket and So.. off we go with the game itself.
Within seconds of the actual game starting, it’s flaws are immediately visible, with the siren blazing from the police car, the numerous cars on the road just carry on regardless, you can drive right behind a car forever and it will not budge an inch to let you past. Clearly the traffic is there purposely to get in your way, only it doesn’t. There’s enough space between the road and the crash barriers on either side to floor it with zero chance of anyone being in your way as they stick to the road while you drive down the side. Should you hit a car or even a big truck, your greeted to some appalling crash scenes where a few bit’s fall off whatever you hit and it promptly stops dead. One classic crash scene we encountered was where we hit a big truck carrying tree trunks which just exploded right in front of us while our own car just picked up a few scratches. Sadly the developer seems to think these crashes actually look good as without any announcement about whats going on, the camera changes to a cinematic view and gives you a replay of what just happened. Your then dumped straight back into controlling your car again.
Take a look at the fantastic crash scenes below:
Once you catch up with the offending driver it becomes clear what the tip was about in the initial “briefing” screen. It seems in the crazy world of this game, to give a driver a speeding ticket you have to crash into them to send them spinning off the road. Strangely the car your after doesn’t just instantly fall to bits like all the other cars on the road and keeps going no matter how hard you crash into it unless you put them into a spin. Just as the pre-game tip suggested, by spinning their car the driver gets very confused and so stops driving. You then have to make sure you and the other car don’t moved for around 5 seconds, and voila, the driver get’s his speeding ticket. Make sure the green car doesn’t slowly roll into the crash barrier though because if it does it will suddenly appear on the other side of the road, turn around and drive back up the road and get away. At least that’s what happened on one of our attempts.
So with this level over it’s onto the next. we get told we need to go and pick up a cadet from the training centre and “involve him in our investigations”. Apparently there was a crash on the A4 the other day and this is what we are investigating. Ever safety conscious following the crash, we get told to race over within the next 2 minutes or we will fail the task. Along the way we have to drive through 8 checkpoints which mark the way to the location. If you arrive to pick the cadet up in time but haven’t driven through one of the 8 checkpoint’s then you fail, even though you arrived on time. While the cut-scene dialogue is playing the car is being driven along the road by the computer. Once finished you gain control and the countdown starts. You can skip the cut-scene but if you do then the countdown starts right where the car currently is, so your given less time to complete the objective as your not as far up the road as you would have been had you listened to it all.
In the unlikely event anyone is still playing the game at this point, you pick the cadet up and await your next instructions. We get told to head on over to a motorway services with the cadet and that we will all go in separate cars. Here the police set a further fine example of road safety and between them decide to have a race on the public roads to see who can get to the scene of the fatal road accident first. This levels tip tells us that we shouldn’t really be using the siren on our police car as we arn’t on an emergency call, but should we decide to then we won’t get told off about it. This tip is pointless because as we know from earlier, the siren and lights have no effect on other cars whatsoever. The next mission is another timed waypoint style thing and at this point we could stand no more so ended the demo.
So what exactly is this game supposed to be about? From playing the demo, we get the impression that you act out the lives of a police, car crash investigations unit who have little regard for the laws of the road and probably cause the crashes their investigating. The brief video clips that play in the background of the menus show Formula One cars being raced and cars racing through the windows of building in Stunt Driver style though so we don’t really see how this relates to the story in the demo. We therefore still have no idea what the game is supposed to be about. Having said all this we would still recommend downloading the demo. it’s a bit like one of those films that’s so bad it ends up being entertaining as you wait to see what stupid thing is going to happen next. Of course developers always say demos are not a true reflection of the final game so hopefully in this games case this is accurate and it turns out to be a lot better. If not, then expect to see this game coming soon in all good bargain bins.
