Nintendo has F-Zero and Sony has Wipeout, but Microsoft is without a futuristic racing series to call its own. When I saw Antigrav Racing Championship and its shiny graphics, my heart skipped a beat. Could this be the futuristic racing game that 360 owners have been waiting for? Sadly, no.
The first indication of trouble occurred when I hit another player. Rather than bounce around like I’d expect in this sort of game, my craft instantly did a 180 and began to zoom through the course in reverse. A bit of experimentation proved that this was not a fluke occurence. Crashes feel more like glitches – you might start going backward, you might go straight into a wall, or you might just slightly nudge the other guy and keep going. The developer obviously realized this was a problem by their inclusion of an automatic “self-destruct/get placed back on the track” button, but this is a slapdash fix at best.
Beyond the glitchy crashes, a bigger problem quickly arises. The game just isn’t very exciting. Sure, they tried to give the game some personality with various fantasy courses like zombie & ninja themed tracks, but the tracks are all fairly bland, regardless of their appearance. Extremely fast speeds are the hallmark of the futuristic racer and they are nowhere to be found here. Likewise, the fun power-ups and weapons found in the Wipeout series are similarly absent outside of a similar speed boost.
Between the glitchy crashes, average speeds, and limited power-ups, there’s not much fun to be found here. Perhaps, a futuristic racer worth playing will show up on the 360 eventually, but Antigrav Racing Championship is not it.
