Pocket Racers

February 2,2007 - What happens when soul-stealing nerds don’t get invited to the cool parties? Apparently, they stroll by with their big rig and turn all of the cool kids into tiny cars to make you race for their souls. Absurd plot aside, Pocket Racers attempts to bring some Hot Wheels-style car combat action to a system that’s flooded with quality racing experiences. Does it make a dent in the PSP’s racing catalogue or does sink to the bottom of the pile?

The story is so stupid and absurd in Pocket Racers that it’s better to forget that this game actually has a story. The premise is to compete in “Soul Races” to save your friends’ lives, but there’s no actual incentive to really care that one less stupid teen is gone from this world. The impact of the story may have been better if your friends were more than just a bunch of people you are suppose to care about. As it stands, they’re just strangers you'll likely forget about once their soul is stricken from this virtual world.

The main mode of the game is the Soul Race mode, which covers three sets of five courses each with three tiers of races. If you’ve played a racing game before, none of these races are going to be much of a problem at all, but you'll have few weapons at your disposal. No difficulty setting means the game isn’t going to get that much harder in later courses. There’s also the option to practice each course and compete in time trials, but there’s no encouragement to do so unless you’d like to get familiar with the courses. It will only require maybe five to six hours at most to complete all of the soul races with maybe a little more time to unlock all 16 cars. Online multiplayer isn’t worth mentioning since nobody’s online anyway. Local ad-hoc multiplayer is offered, but with no game sharing abilities here, there’s no reason to buy two copies of this game, let alone just one.

The cars look somewhat nice in detail but their designs are bland and stereotypical of a racing game. You have your sports car, off-road vehicle, pickup truck, formula racing car, dune buggy, and others that don’t really stand out enough in look or in attributes to really need to change them between cars. The courses are nicely detailed, with lots of trash, cans, paint, oil, books, and other things lingering around the house that show how hard these teens must have partied before the nerd crashed the party. Most of the trash seems to be nice and light so that your car can plow right through anything lying in your way.

The music in Pocket Racers is typical techno/rock garbage that might as well be turned off to not waste any battery juice while you play. Just turn on your iPod or whatever mp3 or music player you may have to pick out your own soundtrack instead. The sound effects do a decent enough job to convince you that you have been shrunk down by a nerd into a Hot Wheels car and that you’re racing around a pigsty of a house. If you’re not going to listen to the music though, you might as well just not have the volume on at all.

When it all comes down to it, Pocket Racers is a decent racer that doesn’t really do anything different enough to warrant passing on any of the quality racing experiences that the PSP offers. If you’ve already played those games to death and want something new to pass the time for a few days, pick this up as a rental. There’s no reason to pay full price on Pocket Racers unless you want some buyer’s remorse.

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