Ever since the late nineties, video games have taken the ‘driving simulation’ into many different routes. Most popular are Gran Turismo, but most gamers are not looking for the polygons in scenery or the extremely detailed driving engine and over more cars available for driving, Only the ability to customize, drag, and pimp out stock parts from well known cars as they do in real life.

This my friends, has turned the head of futuristic driving simulations, to street racing games. Having not heard of Top Gear for a long while since the early SNES games, developers kemco decide to swing into the import car tuning race with the Xbox title, Top Gear RPM Tuning.



Gameplay

In adventure mode, the play is much similar to the action found in Need for Speed Underground. I say that as a compliment, though the driving isn’t as precise and sensitive as the car licensed Import tuning game. The game as far as the overall feel is that of a quick arcade mode. The A.I is very weak in the mission based races (mostly point A to B) and there is very little to get over in the game itself.

Given that the actual point to making your four wheeled machine the monster of the road is to dominate the possibly better tuned cars that you meet from race to race, the idea of tuning is not as stressed for a win; ending in a more or less tug of war till the finish, a very annoying tug of war.

In the games, Adventure mode, quick Race and others, the most appealing is the Free mode. Putting aside the other racers, you endeavor in a simple cruise around L.A, the bragged sixty miles are nice for such a game and add to a bit more level of depth to individual races borrowing a page from Midnight Club. Although the surprise crashes keep you on the edge of your seat as you find the fastest way to first, the arcade like controls makes handling an issue.



Most import tuning games love to brag over the beauty of there cars and the actual look, but in a game that doesn’t license any cars makes the design feel generic and old. The most respectable look a likes such as the Ford F-150, Mustang, BMW, and Ford Focus among others make appearances in the game. With the ability to adjust the look of your car completely with paint jobs, wheels, accessories, styling out the body with kits, fins and stickers. From the outside to under the hood, the range of choices is quite deep for the game itself, from nitro, injection and intake, internal, electronic and tuning systems. Along with the speed enhancements, the suspension, chassis, breaks, weight are fine to be tuned as well.

As you fine tune your machine to godly heights, the arcade controls seem to redeem themselves and the feel of your car shines through, but the overall experience doesn’t last long enough for the car to really perform to its best abilities. Quite the shame, only 10+ hours of racing and you can complete the game without any real challenge.