World Tour Racing by Teque
CD

Type: 3D racer

Players: 1 or 2

Tracks: 16

Game modes: 3

Memory Track: No

Procontroller: Yes

As the Jag CD’s first racer, World Tour Racing (WTR) kinda has a lot to live up to. Well, it doesn’t give the all around awesome gaming experience like Iron Soldier 2 or BattleMorph, but it does provide some excellent fun factor.

The game has 3 modes of play. Single race is just that, one race. In Championship mode, you race all of the tracks with your configurable car settings, keeping track of a 32 digit password after each event (no memory track...) In this mode, you can choose a qualifying race to determine what spot you’ll start at in the main race. If you decide not to do a qualifying run, you’ll automatically be put in the last position to start out. Then, there’s the Arcade mode. This mode requires you to increase your finishing position each race, or you lose. You also rack up points for speed and overtaking cars. You lose points for being overtaken. All in all, there’s some good variety.

The graphics fall short of a stunning next-gen look. While they look good, they don’t have the spark that most of the current racers have. The graphics are a mix of gouraud shaded polygons and scaled bitmaps and sprites. The gouraud shaded polys look nice with no depth errors or flicker. The bitmap signs of Jaguar game logos look good from a distance, but when up close, they warp and skew. The T-mapping on the track is most noticeable when it comes to warping, but you can press the 8 button to turn it off. Clouds in the background scale overhead as you race, and there is even a layer of parallax scrolling in the various backdrops (which look nice, sporting scenery from each locale) ;) The cinemas in the game are nice! There are a lot of full motion video sequences to go along with the player’s position and game mode selection.

The framerate seems to be the thing everyone is talking about. Telegames’ description called it "super-high"...Well, it’s not quite that, but it is adequate. No, not even 30 FPS. I’m guessing it’s at 25 or so. In the city tracks, there seems to be a lot of roadside signs. These seem to slow the game down, so some of the city tracks are slower and choppier than the country-ish tracks. Sometimes you’ll hit a straight-away, with nothing but a set of texture-mapped hills beside you, and the framerate will really be smooth and quick! A big downfall of the game is the 2 player split screen framerate. It’s probably 10 FPS slower than the single player game :(. In conclusion, the framerate is a bit inconsistent, but overall, it’s bearable and doesn’t keep the game from having some very good playability.

The sound package is real nice. While racing, there are 2 tracks of music that alternate. These are both very cool. The first is a techno-like race tune that has some cool voicing in it that reminds me of T2K. The second tune offers another techno-like sound with a driving beat. Each of the tracks is about 5 minutes long. The sound effects are pretty cool too. The roaring engines get louder as you get closer to them, and the screeching tire effect is very believable. Crashing thuds, tunnel echo and a "final lap" voice-over are some of the others you’ll hear. There isn’t an overwhelming amount of Sfx, but they got what they needed right. The sound in the cinemas is nice as well.

The control is a bit awkward from the start. I was pleasantly surprised when I first started playing. Unlike Checkered Flag, there is a sense of predictability as far as controlling your car goes. I placed 6th on my first try, but then started to get the hang of braking and turning just right. Matt, my cousin, placed 2nd on his first try and was very pleased with the game’s fun factor. On top of that, the car is highly configurable! You can set each of the tires to hard, medium or soft. You can adjust the gear ratios for higher acceleration or set them higher for a track with lots of straight-aways and not much turning. You can adjust your front and back airfoil angles for correcting oversteer and understeer. You can even adjust the brakes to pull to one side for tracks that have a lot of turns in the same direction. I found the control to be very realistic, configurable and pretty much on target.

Gameplay is very good with very realistic car handling, the ability to configure your car, and 7 racing views. The screen looks a little cluttered up with all of the gauges and stuff on there, but you can turn off the map if you like. The computer Artificial Intelligence seemed to have been tweaked nicely. You can pass cars without them trying to slam you off the road (ALA Checkered Flag), and you can have a nice lead without them magically going 700 miles an hour to beat you at the end. When you hit walls and get rammed from behind, you can damage your car. If you lose a front airfoil or wing, you’ll have a hard time steering because of the lack of grip on your front end. If you lose the back wing, your back end will be sliding around because of the lack of grip on that end. Your tires can get worn out as well. What do you do when all of this happens? Pull in and take a pit stop. This is done with a full motion video sequence. If you lose your front wing, it shows that being replaced. If you lose your back wing, it shows that being replaced. So, the sequence changes according to what needs to be fixed. Two player mode is weak with the low framerate and no track map, but it’s still fun to play a bud.

Overall, I’d have to say that WTR is a fine racing game, but it’s not in the class of Super Burnout. Burnout is smooth and fast without the slightest hint of slowdown, but WTR does have a few things over SBO:

Less pop-up
Music in 2 player mode
Longer tracks
More tracks
More configurable vehicles

So, here’s how I rate the Jaguar’s racing game selection:

1. Super Burnout
2. Atari Karts
3. World Tour Racing
4. Val D’Isere Skiing and Snowboarding
5. Power Drive Rally
6. Club Drive
7. Supercross 3D
8. Checkered Flag

Graphics-7 ½

What’s there creates a nice look, but leaves some things to be desired. The T-mapping isn’t perspective corrected, causing the warp and swim effect. There parallax and backgrounds are a nice touch.

Sound/Music-9

I really like the tunes in the game, and the sound effects cover all aspects. A few more in-game tracks would’ve been even better, though.

Control-8 ½

Nice and responsive to turning and braking. The car has a realistic feel to it, and the options allow you to customize the controls to your liking.

Power-7

The game is nice, but it’s one that doesn’t have the wow factor that it could have.

Fun factor-9 ½

With 16 long tracks and 3 play modes, you’ll be playing for hours. The game doesn’t get boring as fast as some other racers because of it’s long tracks. A fine racer for the Jag CD.