My review of Tiny Cars II:
One and a half weeks ago, we got a racing game called Race Cars: The Extreme Rally. If you got that game, pass on this one - it's basically the same, but it has worse graphics, worse sound, and fewer options.
It plays like a Codemasters "racing simulation" for the ZX Spectrum - in other words, it's top-down with a fixed camera and broken handling. Even in Race Cars: The Extreme Rally, there was an option to make the camera follow the car - this game has you driving left, right, up, and down while trying to figure out which direction to turn in. You get used to it after a while, but it's very counter-intuitive. This is magnified by the cars' horrible handling - the only steerable one is the default car, and even that one doesn't handle very well. As if the bad handling wasn't enough, the Enter key is used for powerups, which is annoying. Not only are the cars hard to control, but hazards of any kind(touching another car twice in a row, hitting an oil slick, getting hit with a cannonball) will make your car stay in place, spinning, until it stops, oriented in a random direction. If that doesn't happen, but you are behind a car that does get hit, you will crash into them and stop. It takes ages to get back on course, and by then you've been passed by everybody at least once. It's hardly fun.
The graphics are pretty bad, too. While the menu is decently-drawn(aside from the rather unappealing pink-and-orange color scheme) and easy on the eye, everything else is simply hideous. The Photoshop paintings of the cars in the selection screen not only look like bad caricatures of cars, but have strange highlights and weird angles. The in-play graphics are slightly better, but that is more due to their small size than to any resemblance of good design. At least the tracks themselves look nice - as you see those more than anything else, it makes the graphics as a whole more palatable.
The sounds are all either badly-done or badly-done non sequiturs. The music is annyoing enough on its own(there are only two songs, and they are equally bad), but the sound effects raise a slew of questions. Why is a car alarm used for the countdown, but a horn used to start the race? Why do I hear a bicycle bell when I cross the finish line? Why does my crash sound like a Jew's harp? To call it incoherent would be an understatement.
The theme is very cartoony(it's a horrible pun, but we're dealing with a horrible game). They don't actually draw faces on them, but the cars are all somehow anthropomorphic - "Lassie" practically has a face. It's probably designed to appeal to preschoolers, but the game itself would be too hard for them. What demographic is this marketed to?
Overall, I give Tiny Cars II a score of four and a half out of ten(five for gameplay, five for graphics, four for sound, and four for theme). The controls make it too hard to be any real fun, while the sounds, graphics, and general feel are all turn-offs. Steer clear!
Small side notes:
Rather than fixing the controls, as in Race Cars: The Extreme Rally, Easy mode simply slows enemies down. The result is somehow hard and easy at the same time - it's hard to control your car, but you never get passed.
The title in the game contradicts the title on the site, as it uses Roman numerals.
The graphics, music, and pretty much anything else can be easily replaced, as they are all in seperate folders.
It supports online multiplayer, for some reason.
