Wreckless: The Yakuza Missions Review (Xbox)

Since the advent of the XBOX last November, many gamers have wanted a Grand Theft Auto or Crazy Taxi type game. Well, behold Activision’s attempt to take a little bit from both games, Wreckless. While the game is simply amazing from a graphics standpoint, it leaves the gamer thinking that he was scammed in the game play and replay value department.

In Wreckless you have a choice of whom you want to control. You can either control a pair of female police officers or you can control some misfits that love nothing more than destruction. Each set of characters goes up against the Japanese mafia and goes through ten different missions and then the game is over. Yes, ten missions each and the game is over and we are not talking Halo missions either. The cars range from a regular cruiser to huge monster trucks that run over everything in sight. Unless you are low on time, in which case the AI seems to make my monster truck spin out after hitting a little car. Its just one of the annoying aspects.

The graphics are beautiful. I only have a dinky 20-inch TV and I was blown away, I’m sure it’s even better on a nice WEGA. The sparks and explosions caused by the collisions are breathtaking and sometimes you lose control of your car because you are looking at all the particle effects. The lighting as it reflects off your car and the shadows are also incredible. The nighttime missions will have neon signs and streetlights that look beautiful and reflect off of your car realistically. The cars will damage according to where you get hit. I usually don’t have hood at all when I finish a mission. The only problem with the damage is that I can fall about 200 feet off of an overpass and have very little damage when I land.

The audio is okay. You won’t be blasted away by the sound effects, but you won’t think they are awful. The music is okay, but gets repetitive especially when you have played the same mission over and over for a whole day. The game does not support a user soundtrack so the hopes of playing while “I can’t drive 55” in the background is dashed. Too bad, I think this is Sammy Haggar’s type of game.

The game play is very easy to pick up and play. You have your basic steering, accelerate, brake, and reverse. If you’ve played any driving game you can easily control your vehicle in this game. The second facet of the game play is the traffic. The traffic can make or break whether or not you complete your mission. The gamers is able to change the amount of traffic on the options menu, so if you are getting frustrated, you can always turn it to lighter. Everything on the streets is fair game to the driver. The only thing that I couldn’t see to destroy was the streetlights. For some reason they are ghostly with my car driving right through them without a collision.

Replay Value is absolutely zero. There is no multiplayer game, which would have been great in a game like this. Nothing like a little destruction derby type game with your friends. After the twenty missions are completed, there just isn’t too much to do with this game. I suggest your rent the game and see if you can beat it before having to take it back.

Casual gamers will probably not like how some of the missions are impossible to complete. The AI drivers can sometimes weave through Atlanta-type traffic and not get hit once, while you are involved in a bottleneck. Hardcore gamers will not like how quickly this game will end. If you thought Max Payne was short, you will easily be disappointed with the title. Although the graphics are outstanding, Activision could have given us a little more for our fifty dollars.