4x4 Evolution
GOD's first PS2 racer, despite improvements from the Dreamcast version, still misses the mark.
By Douglass C. Perry
Updated:
That's the desired gameplay experience here, a wide-open, cutting corners-style joyride that enables gamers to play dozens of licensed SUVs and trucks in the country. GOD's 4x4 Evolution, however, may deliver a good game for casual fans of SUVs (which easily can be argued the other way), but as a racing game, 4X4 leaves much to be desired. The simplistic, jerky controls and unrealistic feel, combined with floaty physics make for a racing experience that is frustrating and mundane. I didn't like it, and I don't recommend it.
Gameplay
The game's strengths and weaknesses may balance out in some folks' minds, but in this gamer's mind, after hours of playing through the four modes of play and digging deep into the Career mode, I can honestly say that 4x4 Evolution isn't much fun at all. It may be deep with crazy trucks and SUVs, it may enable you to tinker with them, adjusting and modifying until they're fast, powerful and beastly, but I don't want any part of it. The three major reasons behind my logic are these: 1. The trucks are slow and dull to drive; 2. The physics are floaty and unresponsive; and 3. The final result of these two elements creates a frustrating experience that's more annoying than it is fun, and which, despite the allure of the popular trucks themselves, doesn't create a racing experience nearly as fun as say, Smuggler's Run, the closest thing on the PS2 to 4x4 Evo.
I'll explain: 1. The trucks are slow and dull to drive. These things are lugs. They feel and move slow, and the races rarely appear as if any other cars are on the roads. It's just boring. There are occasional events in which opponent cars smash you out of place, in which case, you're very unlikely to get back into the race at all. Instead of even trying you might as well just restart the level. It's not only boring, it's unforgiving. 2. These cars not only move like freight trains, but the floaty physics and bouncy shocks make for an unsatisfying experience. Again, if you have been pushed out of the race and end up on your side, you might as well just quit, because you'll never catch up. The physics make the car feel like at any time it's about to loose control. Some may call that the whole point, but I call it poor control. Or at the very least, control that misses the point control. 3. Even though the cars are the actual licensed things, they just aren't that much fun to race. The sense of speed is not up to par with any other racer on the system (sans RC Revenge Pro), and the matches are empty, listless competitions. Even the feel for each car is hardly noticeable. I wish I liked it better, but the more I try to come up with good reasons to like this game, the more reasons I think up for disliking it.
But... if you own an SUV, you may still want this. After all, SUV owners may want to race these things. So...if that's you, you can attack 4x4's play the game in four gameplay modes, all of which are standard racing fare: Quick Race, Time Attack, Career mode, and Versus. In case you have never played a racing game before, Quick Race enables players to pick any car in the garage to drive against three computer opponents in a single race. Time Attack is a single race against your own ghost car and is designed to get players to post their best times on a racing board, and Versus pits two humans against one another. The two-player races are standard fare, and aren't terribly intriguing. It's too bad that there isn't a four-player mode. The most intriguing mode is, of course, Career, in which earning money through dozens of tournaments, a la Gran Turismo, enables players to buy parts and modify their cars. This is the game's real kernel.
Players can pick from three classes of cars: stock cars, cars with slight modification, and more highly modified cars. There are nine licensed manufactured cars, Chevy, GMC, Ford, Mitsubishi, Toyota, Lexus, Nissan, Jeep, and Dodge, all which can be altered. In fact, players can create as many as 109 different make model combinations. With enough modifications and alternations, the way each car drives can be drastically changed. For instance, by shifting the handling balance to the back of the car, corner handling is altered enough change the way you approach easy or severe turns. Players can change their tire settings, too, such as smooth, moderate cuts, or deep cut tires, each handling terrain in a slightly different way. To be honest, this kind of modification makes or breaks your chances of survival in the Career mode, but it's not really necessary in the first part of the game, when the competition isn't as relentless. Later on it becomes crucial.
Again, Career mode is the key to the game, but you are going to have like slow, plodding, jerky trucks A LOT to go this far. From Career mode, by entering and winning all of the different tournaments (of which there are dozens), players open up new courses, earn money for more expensive cars, or they can continue to upgrade their own cars. By the time players have finished 15 opens and challenges, their vehicle may have changed so drastically that it becomes a fully tricked out, professional racing vehicle.
The updating aspect to 4x4 is good, as players can upgrade with items such as tires, shocks, brakes, exhaust, chassis, drivetrain, electronics, lights, and so on. Each one of these part menus enables players to pick a dozen or so actual items. For instance, with drivetrains, players can buy carbon fiber or aluminum drive shafts, or with electronics, the selections include ignition, ECU, or EFI systems, which affect things such as race cams for increased torque and fuel injection systems for better performance and speeds. The upgrade menus are moderately quick and easy to handle, and each part is well described and education, much in the same way that the GT series is.
Terminal Reality's game constantly offers options, at every level. The menus are all very text-heavy and at first this aspect of the game can be extremely annoying, but once slowly read and get to grips with the menus, they're not too hard. Although, even with Quick Race you have too many options. Its supposed to be a quick race, right? Other than car options, aspects such as the time of day (dusk, daytime, pitch black and night) and weather effects (sunny, fog, dense fog, rain) affect races. In all, the game is chock full of options, one of its major strengths.
Graphics
One of the game's weakest aspects is its visual allure. 4x4 Evolution makes one believe that the PlayStation 2 is a difficult system to develop for. The car models are all well crafted, though their textures are all very simplified and straightforward, and they look quite good in the replay mode (in fact, they look better in the replay mode than in the game proper). But the landscapes are barren, simple, and repetitive. Mounds of dirt look obviously placed and are even colored differently than the ground. Some objects are actually interactive, such as gates, barrels, and tires, while others aren't. Non-moveable objects such as trees are horribly, horribly imagined, and in most levels, there is only one kind of tree model, copied and pasted wherever it is deemed necessary.
The courses themselves are incredibly simple looking, with redundant cracks in the earth, or lines, and all of them are created with an invisible bumper than extends about four feet out in front of the car that quickly draws in the redundant details of the road. In short, the game doesn't need to be on the PS2 at all, because it doesn't use a single asset in the hardware's repertoire well, and instead makes it look as if GOD was actually struggling with the development, instead of mastering it.
Sound
This is the most difficult section for me to review properly, the reason being that my review copy appeared to have some burps in it that shouldn't appear in any final production copy of any game. The kinds of sounds I heard are lengthened buzzes and beeps that sound just plain horrible; they're painful wretched noises. I have to assume that this is just my reviewable copy, and that these things won't happen in the final production version. But if they are, well, let us know.
Other than that the music is classic adrenaline-pumping guitar-based rock mixed with different kinds of techno. None of it is incredibly original, and yet it works quite well with this kind of driving experience. So, in general with 4x4 Evo the music is good stuff, but I had problems with the sound effects. The sputtering gravel always appears after the event actually happened. The sound effects in general seemed delayed, out of place, and very spotty. The sound effects are also badly mixed, being louder than anything else in the game.
Verdict
The reason to bring 4x4 Evo to PlayStation 2 is a weird one. The game wasn't particularly well received on the PC or the Dreamcast, and it's not like 4x4 is a drastic step up from its brethren. There is no real reason for anyone who owns a Dreamcast or PC to buy it.
But 4x4 Evolution is a decent racing game that specializes in SUVs and trucks and fans of this kind of car may like it, because the real licensed cars are all there. The fact is, 4x4 is not my cup of tea. But even if 4x4 Evo were my bag, the gameplay itself is just not fun. The driving itself is slow, jerky, simplistic, and mundane. It's dull. If it weren't for the spectacularly lengthy career mode, with its oogles of parts, then the game would have received an even lower score.
I don't recommend this game, unless you're absolutely dying to drive an SUV game and simply can't resist the warning signs.
In This Article
4x4 EVO Terminal Reality
Initial Release: Oct 18, 2000
ESRB: Everyone PlayStation 2 PC Macintosh Dreamcast 4x4 Evolution
mediocre
Douglass C. Perry Avatar Avatar
Douglass C. Perry
Official IGN Review
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