Review: Raging Thunder
Score:
68%
Version Reviewed: 2.2
When games were real games, and programming languages had such travesties as GOSUB RETURN (ask Steve...), the big hit in the arcades was Daytona Racer – a massive riot of colour, noise and action. It had very little to do with actual racing physics, this was the land of the power slide, mashing the ‘turbo’ button at the right time and turning the wheel left and right at roughly the correct time. Much like Raging Thunder in fact. Filao have in this title a well put together arcade racing game. Thankfully it is multi-platform, both on Series 60 and UIQ… unfortunately its not yet available for S60 3rd Edition, which means there is a logistics problem. The first is that the majority of S60 sales are on now on 3rd Edition, so they are currently missing most of their potential market.
The game itself has its ethos pinned squarely on its chest. Filao proudly state that “speed, accessibility and fun trump the limitations of real world physics” are driving the game, and it shows. The graphics hurtle by at a fair rate of notes, the car handles quickly to your inputs, there’s the gaming rush to make the checkpoints in time.
Everything you’d expect to see in a game like this is here – there’s nothing radically different, although the turbo power-ups to be driven through and the skull slow-downs (to be avoided, obviously) do add some extra gaming interest. Even the ‘we’re choosing style over substance’ has been done before, although perhaps not in quite so polished a form on the Symbian platform. And because of that, there’s a certain sense of déjà vu. Nothing makes the game stand out from the crowd beyond perhaps the sheer speed of its arcade gameplay.
The problem is, while this makes the game accessible and quick to master, it also lets the game down in the longer term. There’s very little ongoing challenge, the differences between the cars is noticeable, but not to a huge extent, and overall there’s no real sense of something stunning. At $15 it’s just about value for money, in the same way that a fast food meal is. At the time, you love, it, but afterwards you'll think you missed out on something.
Ewan Spence, November 2006
Reviewed by Ewan Spence at