Earache Extreme Metal Racing
When it comes to films, there is nothing worse to me than a movie that appears to have been filmed for nothing more than to sell the soundtrack. A 2 hour commercial for a CD, usually hip-hop or rap and always utter crap from a movie standpoint. For gaming, this usually takes the form of product based browser-games that are typically free and amount to little more than a short diversion at the office.
Unfortunately, gaming has again taken its queues from film, only in a bad way, with Earache Extreme Metal Racing. Described as heavy metal gothic fantasy arcade racing, EEMC plays more like a sluggish Twisted Metal meets Mario Kart whose tint has been turned too far towards red. Earache Records is a music label specializing in death metal rock bands with names like Mortiis, Morbid Angel and The Berzerker. Now don’t misunderstand, we aren’t trashing death metal, but the simple fact is that 10 of their signed bands are each represented by a car in the game. Each car has one special attack and a boost to propel it around tracks of various hell-based themes of fire and lava. Health and extra boost can be picked up by running over zombies shuffling around the maps.
Call me crazy, but racing games should have an element of speed. EEMC lacks any such semblance, even on the fastest PC. Additionally, the controls feel unresponsive, forcing you to plan your attacks and even navigate turns a second or two before they should happen. Hell (pun intended), we couldn’t even seem to throw our car in reverse during the many times we flew off the track, up a blockade and onto areas that had no other purpose than decoration.
Initial releases were expected to coincide with the 6/6/06 hype that came and went. In fact, the official site obsesses with the satanic number as if it had a bearing on the title, but the full game won’t see the light of day until July 7th for the PC, 28th for the PS2 and later for the PSP. It’s clear that EEMC was pieced together in an attempt to push death metal music into the gaming mainstream, but no doubt will be damned to the bargain bin for eternity.
[Editor’s Note] Our review was based on a pre-release demo, however we feel demos should be representative of the final product and this title’s flaws were clearly more than just programming glitches errors inherit in the development cycle, especially being a month from release.
