Atari Crashday review

Driving one extremely fast and expensive sports car into another extremely fast and expensive sports car may sound like lots of fun, but is it really a game? Atari certainly seems to think so, and so it has created the demolition-based Crashday.

While it sounds brilliant, we have our doubts. First, the actual driving is some of the most unrealistic we've ever seen in a game. While you can't expect a game about smashing cars at high speed to be overly lifelike, at times it feels more like you're driving a hovercraft than a performance vehicle. And it's not just one car that feels like this. No matter which model you choose, they all seem to handle in exactly the same way.

This is particularly irritating on the levels where you have to race round a track, as it makes it nigh on impossible to corner properly. The problem is compounded by the game's insistence that you have to pass through a series of checkpoints, which it places right on corners. We spent a large portion of our time reversing back around the track to make a checkpoint we'd skidded straight past.

The stunt levels are more fun, where you are awarded points for performing outlandish stunts in your car. The levels are varied and there are some great ramps, such as loop-the-loops. However, it mostly boils down to jumps, which can become a little tedious.

A big part of the game are the destruction levels, where you take your machine gun and missile-armed car and blow up the opposition. Again, this is brilliant fun for a while, but it's too easy to kill and be killed, so matches soon become repetitive.

The detailed and slick-looking graphics make up for a lot, but they can't save this game from feeling like the entertaining bonus section of a proper racing game, and you will soon bewishing that you could get back to some proper high-speed driving.