The ‘futuristic racer’ is coming back with a vengeance of late, with the likes of the forthcoming F-Zero GX rekindling the public’s love of all things fast and brightly coloured. XGRA or Extreme-G Racing Association to give its full name, is the fourth game in the XG series, which in all honesty, has always promised more than it could comfortably deliver.

XGRA attempts to reverse the series’ fortunes by providing players with a plethora of rollercoaster-style tracks, eye-blistering speed and a bunch of championships to compete for over the course of your XGRA career. How it fares is very, very much up to the individual player. Generally when reviewing a game, you can say that most players will enjoy it, or most players will hate it, and you also feel confident when you say it. In this case, I can’t tell if people are going to flock to the game in droves, saying that this is the speed-fest that we’ve all been waiting for, or alternatively, if people will be put off by a few corners that in my opinion, are actually impossible to navigate around safely. Ok, ok, you can call me a wimp later.

To be fair to Acclaim here, XGRA can provide a real seat-of-the-pants ride and at times, provides thrills galore when you’re neck-and-neck with an opponent, heading for the finish line or more importantly, the last boost pad before the end of the race. However, when you are not on a boost rush and your vehicle is travelling at its ‘normal’ speed, the game feels as if it is running in slow motion or some weird bullet-time mode. The way that the camera jerks when you hit a boost pad or slow down from a boost is a wee bit off-putting too, as if the game is telling you that it is either too slow to begin with, or that you should prepare yourself as it is about to be slow once more. Don’t get me wrong, the speed of the game is all intentional, but it just feels a little strange at times.

Given that XGRA is a very stylish piece of software with some excellent graphical touches and track designs, you’d expect the various weapons to be real boomers, but unfortunately (and in very simple terms), they aren’t. You’ve got your mines, tracking laser, basic gun and a few other power-ups, but none of them really make you look forward to obtaining them. The way in which they are obtained is a little less than pleasing also, as you have to collect green orbs that litter the track, with each one stepping you up to the next available weapon. I preferred the old ’shall I pick this weapon up or will a bigger one be available around the next corner’ that Wip3out provided, rather than this step-by-step method.

So, XGRA looks pretty, tears along a little too fast at times, is too slow at others and generally gives out a feeling of average-ness. It settles in nicely as an improvement over XG3, but that isn’t really saying much. XGRA is not a terrible game ‘ far from it ‘ but it certainly doesn’t even hold a candle to F-Zero GX.