Game review:
- Tokyo Xtreme Racer 3 - 2003
- Developer: Genki
- Version: Playstation 2
Tokyo Xtreme Racer 3 is the fourth entry in Genki's lineup of highway street racers, taking place in Tokyo at night and seeing the player battle a number of racers in one-on-one battles across the interwined highway system of Tokyo. This game takes the concept a step further by having two additional cities: Osaka and Nagoya, although these are noticeably smaller than Tokyo itself. At its core, Tokyo Xtreme Racer 3 is a pretty straightforward racing game, but a number of intricacies make it both surprisingly complex and unfortunately far less approachable than many other racing games.
Upon starting a new game, the player will be tasked with using whatever money they have in purchasing a car and applying what upgrades they can for it. Initially very little is available in terms of car purchases, but as more money is gained and key rivals are beaten, new cars as well as parts for said cars are progressively unlocked. Alongside selecting a starting car, the player will also be given an option to start in any of the three cities: I went with Tokyo first, which generally has the most compelling track layout of the three, with quite a few turns and the ability to switch between the outer and inner sections. Once you're actually in the driver's seat, you will notice a few things on your interface. The first is the map on the top left, showing colored arrows moving around: these indicate your rivals, generally gang members, who you may challenge by approaching them from behind and flashing your headlights. You also need to keep checking the temperature of your water and oil tanks: if they reach 100°C, your car's performance will noticeably start to suffer. Your tires will also become less grippy the more you drive, and while it takes a long time for them to wear out and this is not shown on the HUD, you will start to notice it once it gets bad enough. Two other important things you will see are your trip meter and your odo meter: the former determines how long your car has driven by on a given night, and the latter determines how long your car has been driven for in general. These two stats may seem like mere curiosities at first, but end up playing a huge role in the game later on. You will always be racing at night, and the night only ends once you return to your garage via the menu. If you don't want to end the night but still want to rest to lower your tanks' temperature, you can always enter a pit zone, which in Tokyo's case is also the main way of switching between the outer and inner parts of the highway.
In terms of gameplay, Tokyo Xtreme Racer as a whole has always been a very simplistic affair. Almost all of the races are one-on-one duels, although occasionally a rival will call upon an ally, meaning you need to race against two rival cars instead. The way the races actually work is a bit unusual in that they're not strictly races that require you get to a specific point: instead, upon starting one, each car will get a "life bar" on the top of the screen, which is automatically reduced everytime one of the two cars is too distant from the car in front, or whenever a crash into a wall or another car occurs. There is sparse traffic, but unfortunately only a single traffic car model is present, a yellow van with the Genki logo, making for a bit of a repetitive and unrealistic experience in this regard. There is nothing to do in the game besides these races, as exploration plays no part other than locating pit stops. The car handling is definitely not the most responsive out there, and some critics of this particular entry in the franchise have described it as "driving on ice". I think you can get used to it, but the very first car I got had some extreme oversteering which made any kind of turn all but impossible without smashing into a wall. Subsequent cars I got were better albeit quite understeery. In terms of track layouts, as mentioned, Tokyo is the only one that could qualify as being technical, due to curved roads and turns, but most of the time you will be driving in a straight line, especially in the other two cities, which consist almost entirely of straights, especially in the beginning. This means that for the most part top speed will be king in this game, and I advise not to expect anything in the way of more technical circuits like you'd expect in games like Project Gotham Racing or Trackmania.
Let's talk about progression more broadly. Most of the opponents you will fight are members of street racing gangs, which generally have six to eight members each. Using the garage and pit stop gives you the option to look into the rivals' list, where you can check which gangs patrol which parts of the highway, thus allowing you to meet your desired opponents on the way. Once you defeat all members of a particular gang, you will be challenged by a gang leader, who drives a faster car and is generally more challenging. Then, once you defeat a set number of gang leaders, a special boss will appear on the map, introduced by a cutscene, and beating said boss, who is significantly more challenging, will actually advance the game's progress. All the while, beating specific gang leaders and bosses also unlocks specific cars and parts. Parts are the key component of the game's customization system: you can get engine upgrades, new brakes, new tires for better grip, and a host of other features. These are crucial to get anywhere in the races, as you will be outclassed very fast by cars that are even slightly better than yours, although the AI is not very good at taking corners.
But the game throws a wrench into the whole system by having an additional class of racers called wanderers: these are lone racers unaffiliated with any gang who will only ever appear on the map if you fulfill certain requirements, which range from fairly simplistic to downright esoteric and patently ridiculous. A wanderer may appear if you've exited a pit stop for the first time or if you are driving on a specific day of the calendar, but others appear if all the numbers in the day are matching (e.g. 11, 33, 222, etc.), if your car has a specific sticker on it, if your car has a specific set of numbers on your license plate, or if you possess an exorbitant amount of money. Even worse, you may achieve these prerequisites, but sometimes wanderers will not accept your challenge until you fulfill even more esoteric prerequisites! Now, the main problem is that in order to beat the final boss and obtain the true ending, you will need to beat every single racer in the game, including gang members and wanderers. But not only is it extremely frustrating to have to track down all this ridiculous nonsense needed to trigger the wanderers in the first place, but the game gives you generally no indication whatsoever about what you even need to do to encounter them in the first place, leaving you to the mercy of online guides if you are to make any significant progress in their lineup.
This is coupled with a few other crippling problems the game suffers from, which ultimately come down to grinding. First of all, parts and cars are quite expensive to buy, and you will not receive any kind of substantial payouts from most of the races you'll be doing, with the only exception being boss battles. This means that if you want to have a suitably large garage, you will need to spend a long, long time racing the same opponents over and over in order to slowly accumulate the money needed for cars. But there is an additional problem, in the form of the aforementioned odometer. For whatever reason, one of the most powerful engine upgrades you can do, engine swaps, can only be performed on cars that have obtained at least 1000 on their odometer. This takes hours to achieve, meaning you will be able to do engine swaps only on a single car at most on your playthrough, if even that. Both of these issues leave little choice but to resort to cheat devices if you want to experience more than one or two vehicles throughout your playthrough.
In terms of presentation, the game can best be described as utilitarian. Being mostly set at night, darkness will be your ever present companion, and despite being technically located in the middle of a busy metropolis such as Tokyo, there is little in the way of scenery. You will sometimes pass some trees, some apartment blocks, some lit signs, and be able to catch the glimpse of a few landmarks in the distance (such as the Tokyo tower), but other times you will be completely surrounded by pitch black darkness, which really does not make you feel like you would be in a big city at night. What little scenery there is is mostly unremarkable, but I soon started being glad to see just about any kind of building or location to just have any kind of visual variety. The music, which is not licensed, is split into four categories. Tokyo has some decent but somewhat repetitive hard rock, Nagoya has decent but also somewhat repetitive electronic music, and Osaka unfortunately has some metalcore-style music that I really couldn't stand. I thought the best music was actually in the menus, featuring some pretty catchy rock and funk themes. I imagine they too would get repetitive during races, but they're still the ones I liked the most. In terms of sound effects, there isn't much to listen to besides your engine's noise, the sound of tires, and the occasional collision sound, none of which are remarkable.
I've clocked around 15 hours into this game, gotten into Phase II which unlocks bigger parts of each city (and the ability to travel between cities freely), but that was when the game had just stopped being fun. I had seen just about everything its gameplay had to offer, short of getting a faster car, and the idea of having to face increasingly difficult odds of meeting wanderers killed whatever drive I had to complete the game. The roads all start feeling the same after a while, and those outside of Tokyo are particularly simplistic and thus not interesting to drive on. I know there is a Phase III, where apparently the cities are joined together and you can travel between them by driving instead of using the menus, but I don't think I'll ever see it. I cannot be too harsh on the game, as 15 hours is still a decent length for such a basic racing game, and I had quite a bit of fun in my time with it. Unfortunately, I tend to prefer actually seeing games to the end, but in this case, I quit in the face of the overwhelming tedium that lay ahead. The game has some interesting ideas, but excessively basic gameplay and some extremely convoluted design choices hold it back from greatness.
Final grade: C-
Please let me know your thoughts, even if you don't enjoy this game or this type of game, I'd like to know if you are interested in reading more reviews from me, as I'd like to talk about some of the games I've played over the years. Any criticism or feedback welcome.
Like I said, this is a game I did enjoy for over a dozen hours, and I think you can definitely get some enjoyment out of it if you don't try to actually complete the game. I'd definitely be curious to read your review on it if you do get around to it! I really like racing games and am always excited to play more of them as well as read more reviews about them.