Pocket Racers Review

Konami is a very hit or miss publisher. There rarely is any middle room with their games. Either they are good or bad. You have excellent, industry-leading franchises like Metal Gear, Castlevania, Dance Dance Revolution, Winning Eleven and Gradius. Then you have games like last year’s Nintendo DS flop (also a racing game) Dragon Booster, King Arthur, Karaoke Revolution, practically every Frogger and now Pocket Racers. These are the types of games that you should avoid at all costs.

The storyline alone will prove my point adequately. You and some friends get invited to a party. What you didn’t know was that your soul would be put on the line. A sorcerer turns you and your friends into tiny little toy cars. Now you are going to have to race around this house in order to protect yourself, as losing races will cost you souls (i.e. cars in your collection). Not even EA could come up with a worse storyline for their Need for Speed games.

As far as game modes go, there really aren’t any. You have three options: practice, soul race and time trials. In other words, you race a course for fun, you race a course with your soul on the line or you race a course for the best time. Whichever one you pick, you still going to be racing the same boring courses over and over again with almost no difference between each of the game modes. Sure, there is wireless local area multiplayer, but I would only pity the other guy that owns a copy.

If you choose to play the game anyway, be prepared for some poorly designed courses, bad graphics and limited selection of cars. I have seen the so-called pocket car theme done before in games and it can be done quite well. Just check out Re-Volt for the Dreamcast for proof of that. The controls are actually pretty tight (unlike Re-Volt), but the courses are very confusing and hard to follow. The graphics don’t help in this respect, either. Thankfully by pressing circle you can reset your car.

In conclusion, Pocket Racers is a game that has little redeeming value to it. In fact, it has none at all. This is one of the worst attempts I have seen at a racing game in quite a long time. Konami should be embarrassed to have published a game that actually penalizes gamers, by taking their soul and wasting their time, for the faulty course design that the developers are responsible for. I would recommend this game to no one. Only a soulless person would do such a thing.