Test Drive: Eve of Destruction for Xbox Reviews by Gamers

Some days I feel like Rip Van Winkle just waking up some mornings and finding out some things had changed drastically. Watching poker on TV? C2 soda? Videogames that feature some redneck version of racing? And just like that, Test Drive: Eve of Destruction appeared in my life and proceeded to not exactly wow the pants off of me. If you want to see cars bash into each other, this game is for you. If you're looking for an in-depth driving experience, you're better off looking elsewhere.

The basic concept for the game is this: in some parts of the country where people have more cars than sense, they like to bash them up and call it a sport. When there's more than one event to have at one time they'll put them on the same night and call it an Eve of Destruction. The call goes out and all the folks with a spare car or few enter them into some ridiculously destructive races that involve cross-traffic or just cut to the chase and have a demolition derby.

One thing that is impressive in Eve of Destruction is the large list of different available ways of racing. It really does just keep on going and going. One of them is called Red Rover where cars drive from one zone to another and the last one to make it gets cut from the race. By going back and forth a winner is finally culled from the rest. It's incredibly rough with cars smashing into each other allover the place, but that's just the beginning.

The Red Rover race provides plenty of opportunity for some glorious smash-ups, but nowhere near as many as the Flagpole race or the Whip Around race. The Flagpole race involves cars having to circle a couple of flagpoles along the race course. When you get a dozen cars trying to do this at once it gets plenty messy. The Whip Around is no slouch either as it requires cars to do a lap around a course and when they get back to the starting line they need to do a 180 and drive back the other way. So simple and when a dozen cars get involved, the damage piles up quick.

As if that wasn't enough, there are still more races that crank the stupid meter into the stratosphere. Figure-8 races where cars cross paths and then a Figure-8 race with a jump in the middle so that cars risk bashing into each other mid-air. Hell, you can even race with a car chained to the back of your own car. If that's not enough, put a camper back there instead. Why? Who knows, but it does improve the odds of collisions.

With all the crashes and smashes going on, Eve of Destruction looks to be a solid way to get one's redneck on without having to go to one of these events in real life. The only problem is that it's not that fun to go through the single-player game. In fact, many of the races are more tedious than entertaining. After going through all of the races in the game I was hoping that the game would finally open up and become a fast racer, but there's a sluggish feeling that never leaves. From the wimpiest compacts to the muscle cars, the game never feels like it gathers enough momentum to take off and become fun.

At first this can attributed to the cars you can afford in the beginning of the game which don't have more than 100 horsepower in any of them. After playing for several hours the only conclusion is that the entire game is slow. While there's more of a sense of speed in the first-person view, it's still clear that the actual racing here takes a backseat to the smash 'em bash 'em appeal. It doesn't help either that the cars handle so poorly in the dirt that an intense focus on spinning off to the side is required to avoid taking turns too wide and that's about as tricky as it gets here.

Even when one does spin out or gets stuck facing the wrong way, there's no immediate way of correcting the car. Like other racing games, Eve of Destruction devotes a button to resetting the car. Unlike these other games, this button can be used very rarely and often at the wrong time. Sometimes when I was facing backwards or went off course the option would appear to reset, but many other times it was mysteriously absent.

Once I was stuck facing sideways in a ditch and had to jigger back and forth Austin Powers-style to get back in the game. After driving a little further, I took a turn a little too wide, still facing the right direction and on the track, and the option suddenly pops up for no good reason. It's not a tool, it's a taunt from the game to you and it's frustrating as all hell.

While it's possible through some skillful driving through the slow system of Eve of Destruction to avoid the problem areas, the whole element of chance in many of the races throws a big fat wrench in the works. The Figure-8 Race with the jump in the middle looks cool and creates some spectacular wrecks, but the whole issue of randomness can suck some of the fun out by knocking you down from first to fifth in an instant right before the end of a race. It's possible to suffer a huge setback near the finish line in other racing games as well, but here it's practically unavoidable and the whole slo-mo action to show off the crash doesn't help either.

The whole presentation problems with the reset option and the odd slo-mo extends off into the main hub system of the game too. The menu area is treated like a small stretch of road with your house, a garage, a car shop, and a couple of places to meet other drivers and bet on a race. For a minute or so it's cool to drive from spot to spot for the different options, but this quickly gives way to just using the "Jump To" option in the menu instead to quickly move from place to place. Once I started doing this I wondered why there wasn't just a fluid menu system in the first place. That way I wouldn't have to go back to my house, switch cars, and then go back to the car shop to decide to sell a different car than the one I was driving. It adds a layer of frustration that didn't need to be there at all.

To make things even worse, the soundtrack features a whopping seven licensed tracks that are guaranteed to make you reach for the mute button. It was cool to hear hear System of a Down's "Boom!" the first time, but the 100th? As most everyone who witnessed this game in action said: "Could you turn the damn music off?" I'd have to agree. A couple of the new songs are worthwhile, but even these get quickly overplayed.

©2004, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved