Pocket Racers for PSP Reviews & Ratings by IGN

If you've seen one of those terrible genre/ hybrid movies like Jason X, then you're well versed with the theme of Pocket Racers, Konami's "spooky" rendition of The Fast and Furious meets Ghost Ship. For a company like Konami, which brought the likes of Castlevania and Metal Gear, this entry into the library of PSP titles is like having Luciano Pavarotti release his own rendition of Raffi songs. Simply put, it's absolutely uninspiring and a little funky. A player needs to keep that in mind if they decide to go on a long road trip with this one loaded in their pocket. Pocket Racers is very clich?d and adds nothing new or original to the genre.



Pocket Racers has elements of fantasy (although shoddy at best) with mention of dark sorcery that turns a bunch of fun-loving partygoers into racecars. This silly combination of two different genres could have been interesting but in this case, it becomes more of a hindrance than a service. Then you have the competitions themselves. Aside from the soul race, where finishing last results in one of the player's buddies losing his soul, the rest of the mode types lack originality (re: wireless multiplayer and time trial). Why this game starts out with such a quirky concept of literal "soul racing" but doesn't do much with is disappointing.



Let's not forget about that selection of cars either. While Pocket Racers offers around sixteen to choose from, all but six are available in the beginning. The rest of them remain under lock and key by a sorcerer until the player wins certain "soul challenges". This type of setup is normally fine, since it offers an incentive, but even when all cars become available, they're not much different than those you start out with in the first place. What's worse, they offer nothing new in terms of handling, speed or ability (which isn't very tight to begin with). Tracks don't fare much better, because while they supposedly boast different objectives, they all look and feel exactly the same. Players just need to dodge simple obstacles and its easy win the race. Like the cars themselves, the tracks suffer from a lack of variety. The ho-hum selection of cars and equally boring tracks is a major roadblock here.



Visually, there are brief moments of originality since this has to be one of the only racing games where it's common to slam into giant bears. The car models lack detail and there's little to speak of when it comes to effects. Aside from that, there's nothing worth mentioning. It's all still the same mundane vistas, even if some of them include kitchen floors and other seemingly non-descript locales. From an audio perspective, music and sound effects do the job but fail to impress. It's the same stuff one would expect from any "backyard style" racing game.



At least multiplayer has a few redeeming qualities. This includes the usual two-player match, but also Domination and Soccer. Yep, you heard it right boys and girls, this bad boy's multiplayer mode has something called "soccer" mode, with the objective being an attempt to push a ball with your car and put it into your opponent's goal. It must not have been silly enough to have a bunch of people turn into cars, they had to play soccer while in car shape as well. It'd be fine if the mode backed up the craziness with solid gameplay, but it doesn't. It's just not all that fun to play.

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