by Tazmanian Devil
World Tour Racing is the second new Jag CD game released by Telegames since Atari's disappearance into JTS. This is the second F1 type racer for the Jag and comes with 16 different tracks, one player mode and a split screen two player mode, ability to configure your car, and nice FMV sequences. There are three modes of gameplay:
WTR utilizes both polygons and sprites. The cars and certain parts of the background are made up of polygons while other parts of the background are made up of sprites. The polygonal cars aren't as sharp in appearance as the polygons in Iron Soldier 2, but the resolution is still ok. Although all the tracks are different, the background (sky, trees) does not change much which makes the tracks a bit uninteresting after a while. There are nice tricks utilized in WTR, like the blurring of the spectators in the stands as you zip past them at high speed, but the one thing about this game that really bothers me is its framerate. These types of high speed racing games should have a high framerate to maintain smooth action. However, the framerate in WTR is choppy, which to me makes this game almost a re-visit of Blue Lightning (nice FMVs but choppy game). The framerate does get pretty fast when you're racing at high speed along a straight part of a track with no other cars near you, but the game does not keep that fast framerate consistently throughout the entire game. The framerate drops even more in the split screen two player mode. Despite the lack of silky smooth gameplay in this game, WTR does manage to keep the fun factor. The computer AI was done very well making racing against the computer cars almost like racing against human players. The sounds and music are pretty good, however, there are only two or three tunes in the game. :(
Control is good once you get the hang of when to break, accelerate, and when to turn. There are no crash and burns in this game. Instead your car does a 360 whenever it crashes into something.
Overall World Tour Racing could have been a nice contender against other racers on the other systems with its ok graphics, good music, and its sweet AI, but the choppy framerate affects the smoothness of the gameplay. So I'd have to give Super Burnout the cup for best racer on the Jag, but I'll still be playing a lot of WTR since it is the best F1 racer on the Jag.
| Graphics: | 7 |
| Sounds: | 9 |
| Gameplay: | 7 |
| Overall: | 69% |
--Tazmanian Devil