Thursday, December 2, 2010

Hands-on Preview: nail'd

http://diehardgamefan.com/2010/11/25/hands-on-preview-naild-2/

The racing itself is the main attraction, of course, and the controls honestly couldn't be much easier. The right trigger accelerates, the left trigger brakes and goes in reverse, the left stick steers, and the A button kicks in a turbo boost. That's really about all you need to know about driving, and you can literally pick all of that up in the tutorial the game gives you when you boot it up. There are some more specific uses of said controls, especially when steering in mid-air, that you'll pick up as you play, but for the most part, the controls are quite easy to learn… it's the racing itself that's challenging. The courses literally go all over the place, up walls, down tunnels, past moving cars and trains, and of course, over large jumps that send you airborne for large distances. To say that the racing is intense is an understatement at times, as you'll find yourself on tracks that force you to dodge obstacles like your life depends upon it… or at least, your place in the race. Crashing loses you a few seconds while the game respawns you on the track, and as such, should be avoided whenever possible. If you need to get ahead in a hurry, like in a case where you end up crashing and losing your place, the game also provides you a handy option to use turbo to boost your way forward. You have a finite supply, of course, though the game is quite nice about giving it back to you, as you have several options to earn it. Landing jumps clean, jumping through flaming rings, passing through flaming gates, and performing various feats while racing, among other things, will earn you a healthy amount of turbo power to use whenever you need it at the press of a button, though you'll want to be mindful of the fact that using said turbo when attempting to take a turn is… probably not a good idea. Just saying. http://naildbiter.com/OmaKf