Ferrari Challenge Review

If you have ever read my reviews before, you should know that I am a race game enthusiast. Which is why it is disappointing to see so few racing games get released and then succeed on the Nintendo DS. As great of a system as the Nintendo DS is, the only racing game that is really worth the $35 investment is Mario Kart – and half of that game is rehashed courses from the SNES, N64 and GameCube versions. Ferrari Challenge does not change this unfortunate trend of poor racing games.

The game starts off with a brief tutorial to get things going. You race and are scored for it based on a number of different criteria. This includes braking for corners, following the race line and passing rival vehicles. If you collide with one of your rivals, go off the track or get overtaken, you will lose points. This gives you the incentive of playing a clean race and not cutting corners, bumping into your opponents and so on. Since there is a score involved it feels more like an arcade racing game of yore, which in my book is a good thing. They decided for whatever reason to not include this carrot and stick approach and once you get into the actual game it’s penalty-free racing.

This is where things start to go downhill. By going the more traditional route, the developers managed to turn this into yet another boring and visually unspectacular Nintendo DS racing game. What we are left with is a game that consists of three main single player components: a Championship, Exhibition and Time Trial. There is also a single and multi-card multi-player element, but who in their right mind would do this, I don’t know.

The Championship mode is where the majority of the game is, and that’s not saying much. There are Easy, Medium, Hard and Expert modes to choose from. These then will have for instance Easy 1-4, with some consisting of multiple races and others consisting of just a single race but multiple laps. Over the course of the tournament you will accumulate points based on what you place. You will need to meet a goal of a certain rank by the end of the tournament. For instance, to pass Medium 1 you will need to finish fourth or higher. You just keep doing this until you beat all of the races.

I thought the graphics looked good from the screenshots I saw of the game before I actually played it. I was wrong. The vehicle models are blocky and lack significant uniqueness or detail. The tracks and backgrounds themselves are very jagged. I had the problem of not seeing the curves coming on the road ahead, so I oftentimes had to look down at the bottom screen to scan the map for upcoming turns. As for the sound, there are basic engine noises but music is heard only during menus.

As much as I love racing games, I couldn’t come to love this one. There are too few redeeming qualities to offer much praise for Ferrari Challenge. The gameplay is overly generic and lacks creativity that the tutorial strangely enough actually exhibited. Not even the graphics stand out as I thought they might. What we are left with is a box that says Ferrari on it and a game that plays more like a Honda Civic. Not that Honda Civics are bad. They just don’t have the bells and whistles that you expect from a higher end vehicle.