unfinished mess but kind of intriguing. you have to take xans to not die but there are barely any on the map so you just have to run around on the brink of death trying to find some. Just like real life. i only managed to pick any up once but didn't even get to see what the collectable looked like... when your meter depletes your aim gets fucked up, but fortunately the AI can't hit a single shot and will just run towards you or "hide" behind a wall with half their torso poking out

the first 2 levels are playable because they're basically fully linear, the third is a maze of identical hallways and fake doors and completely unnecessary time pressure. i'll probably pick it back up if i really feel like hurting myself

very very cute-looking. unfortunately i tried for way too long to get past that initial wave of pain points and little frustrations you always get with games in that Q? Entertainment vein and just could not get with it.

feels way too common with SCE projects for people to say "oh it's just a tech demo lol" and that definitely doesn't apply here even with the runtime. it really is impressive not only how much they managed to wrangle out of the console graphically so early into its life, but also in how beautifully overdesigned all of its UI/UX is

Surprisingly playable for data design interactive's standards. same issue as classic british motor racing on the ps2 where it's an obvious backport from the wii and it can't run for shit, but i know you're not going to play this on real hardware so just turn the internal overclock in pcsx2 up. genuinely fun and responsive handling model kneecapped by the lack of bounce when you hit anything and no respawn button. you lose like 10 seconds just fucking around whenever you clip an obstacle. at least the ai is incompetent enough for that not to be a real issue?

i assume this is completely unplayable on wii with the motion controls lol

a decent first act and a painful 5 hours after that. the commitment to "truer" physics-based driving is good on paper, but it feels like they got too excited and put the spring rate as low as they could. fine when you're in San Diego, tolerable through most of Paris, unplayable trying to worm your way around right angles in Tokyo

at first i was honestly really excited for the course design compared to MC3, giving you more choices in route than just shortcuts, but it just adds so much more trial and error in route planning (that damned Enigma race...) in a series already kinda renowned for its restart counts.

if it was just one issue, just the course design, just the handling, just the traffic, i'd easily recommend this to anyone alongside 3. but the truth is that they all feed into each other in such a way where almost every race has more dread attached to it than the satisfaction of "solving the puzzle". even in the late-game, you see those flashes of inspired course design come up, but it just isn't enough to offset it for me

the additional cars are a really nice addition to the game but tokyo challenge is so poorly made and balanced that as a whole i considered giving this a lower rating than the original. maybe it works a little better if you play it in conjunction with the main game but being a completely separate menu option with a few minutes of loading time to get between them kneecaps that immediately. try playing it after you finish the story (or even just get to the point where you unlock the A class), and you spend your time alternating between piss-easy races in exotics and brutal championships with cars 2-3 classes above your requirement.

i'll write a more positive review for the base game eventually, but the only thing saving this from being below it (as a whole, i know you can just not play tokyo challenge) is the novelty of riding in mc3r's beautiful carlist in a reused map 3x better than the maps made for the real game

this review is really bad but i felt like i had to write something since nobody else will, it definitely deserves at least some recognition for being the only mtb game for like a decade (and the only true realistic experience point blank) until descenders came out

and for the most part it pulls that realism off pretty well with exceptional environment design (although its visuals were way past dated by 2007) and an incredible sense of speed when it all comes together. unfortunately, the game itself seems hellbent on limiting your access to the good parts of it. There are like 25ish time trials in the game (at about 30 seconds-1 minute a piece) and they're all really fun courses but the difficulty is consistently awful along all of them. i don't even get how something like this happens, i finished all but a couple exactly 16.xx seconds over gold.
then there's challenge mode, which is comprised of about 10 more time trials, and then 20 random chores ranging from "wheelie back and forth for 30 seconds" to "do these tricks over these jumps" to "we hate you, jump through these rings placed in awkward positions"

i guess there are tricks in this game but they don't matter outside of arcade mode which is entirely tricking. i skipped this entirely after the first area because this game probably has the worst trick system in any extreme sports game. 4 tricks, 1 per face button, and you can spin in the air. you can wheelie too but they barely give points so there's no reason to do them without a combo system. just flail around for 2 minutes apiece, get some powerups, maybe you have to do point to point runs at the end sometimes, it's sleep-inducing and unfortunately most likely the most substantial mode in the game. It also has a freeride mode but you need to basically beat the whole game to play it, so all your practice is going to come from bashing your head against things

but the real issue with everything outside time trials is how easily you fall over or lose all momentum on landings. if you have any speed and you need to carry it, you have about a 60% chance of getting where you need to be, reduced to 25% if you're landing on a flat surface. and your greatest rival won't be huge 30yd. jumps or tight cornering, it's trying to get onto small lips on the wooden scaffolding plastered all over the maps.

this review feels way too negative for what the game actually gave me though. there's a lot of fun gameplay here hidden behind bad objectives and a very obviously rushed development cycle... you just have to love the art of the budget game

i think the game itself gives me the best way to sum it up: the 2nd to last challenge in the game has a loop to ride, but as soon as you get a quarter of the way up you immediately get a fatality (half the falls end in fatalities with no real reason) and have to restart. the way to win is to stop completely and manoeuvre your way across a gap, which makes you beat the gold time by like 20 seconds