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4.5 Smileys - 1 Smiley Poor, 5 Smileys Excellent
Platforms: Mac OS
Welcome to WaterRace WaterRace is an international boat racing championship that brings together the eight best pilots from around the world who challenge each other on different courses. Each pilot can use the boat of their choosing and the races occur in the pilot's own country with each course having unique features. WaterRace boasts eight different pilots, eight different boats, and eight different locations plus the current champion with her boat and course that you can only see in the tournament. Is WaterRace a fun game to play? Read on to find out...
Pilots and Boats and Courses, Oh My!
I can't really find what major difference each of the pilots have on WaterRace. Although they have a biography, a favorite boat and location, I can't determine what difference choosing Ewan Mac Gore from Scotland has over Wand Lei from China. I can only guess that they have an easier time when piloting their ship and/or on their home course but nothing is stated in the manual. One cosmetic difference is that each boat has a different paint job depending on who is driving it. Sarah Craft, who is a marine, has a boat that has a camouflage design while Francesca Toucci, who wears a white and red dress, has the same pattern on her boats. Each of the boats have differences that go beyond mere cosmetic changes; piloting a hovercraft is very different than piloting a speed boat or an offshore racer. Each of these boats have unique capabilities and it is a good idea to choose a boat that goes well with a certain course. For example, the Venice course has a lot of quick short turns so picking the speed boat with its easy handling would be a better idea than the Formula 1 which is faster but more difficult to control. Of course, a lot can be said for getting very good at one or two boats and relying on your skill to overcome any weaknesses that the boat has on a particular course. The boats that WaterRace offers are the Formula 1, Hydroplane, Cowboat, Dragboat, HoverCraft, Offshore Racer, Speed Boat, and the Airboat.
The nine different courses (Jamaica, Scotland, Navy Base, Venice, Arctic, Grand Canyon, New York, Halong Bay, and the Côte d'Azur) are all beautiful and show off the powerful game engine. In WaterRace the scenery gradually appears as you get closer to it which adds an appearance of depth and distance. There is also a lot of action on and off the courses which is a shame that you can't spend more time appreciating them. In Scotland there is a ghost that floats by the castle, there are some Scottish dancers, and you even see Nessie herself. In the Arctic there is a whale that sometimes surfaces and the penguins waddle around on the ice. The Navy Base has moving cranes and one of the ships even shoots missiles. The amount of detail is incredible. All of the courses have their own particular tricks and illusions that sometimes cause you to go the wrong way if you aren't careful. New York has dim light which makes it hard to see the course markers. Scotland has a thick fog which hides everything, including the other racers. Grand Canyon has so many obstacles that it's easy to lose your way if you become distracted. However, there are course markers and a giant green arrow that points the direction that you have to go so while it is easy to get lost, it is also relatively easy to find where you have to be going. Each course also requires a different piloting strategy to succeed. Scotland is a very roundish course so speed and knowing when to use turbos is important to winning. Jamaica has some hard turns which means that you have to be looking ahead to make sure you're ready for them.
Bonuses and Game Modes Each of the game modes has three levels of difficulty (easy, medium, and hard) that modify the tracks and the skill of your opponents. There are three types of bonuses that are picked up by running into/over them with your boat: Turbo (allows you to increase your boat's maximum speed for a short while), Joker (allows you to restart a race that you lost), and Bonus Points (only found in the Tournament and increases your score).
There are five different game modes and I'll describe each of them briefly.
Graphics and Audio
WaterRace is one game that I didn't want to immediately turn off the music after a few minutes. Each location has a theme song and they are all upbeat and modern while still lending a style to the location of track. French Touch did it right too, by storing the songs as an audio CD partition on the game CD, so you can listen to the soundtrack in any CD player, not just while playing the game. The sound effects are nothing to sneeze at either. If you're passing by a crane then you hear the crane working. Both the music and the sound effects work together to pull you into the race and help you to devote all of your attention to the boats around you. Every racing game needs more than one camera to view the action and WaterRace is no exception -- providing you with four. The default is a camera that's behind the boat that you're driving and is a good choice for most people. If that bores you then you can place the camera just above the cockpit, inside the cockpit, and above the course so you are looking down at the boats.
Controls The controls are very easy to learn because they consist of forward, backward, left, right and turbo. There is no throttle to reduce or increase the speed and the only way to slow down in the turns is to use a gamepad or joystick and press in the diagonal direction. You can't do this with a keyboard so turning the ships is more difficult if you don’t have a control pad or a joystick.
Other Stuff
There are editing tools provided for free by French Touch and although they are very powerful, they do take some learning and practice to use effectively. You can download some free courses and boats from French Touch's web site which show what you can do. There is also multiplayer capability that you can play over TCP/IP if you know the host computer's IP address. Up to 8 players can connect but all you can do is race against each other. The easiest way to find a game would be to get GameRanger and ask around until someone agrees to play with you. WaterRace doesn't support GameRanger directly; it would be great if it did.
Conclusion If you like racing games or if you want the sensation of going really fast in exotic locations then you should buy WaterRace. Even if you don't think that you will enjoy it, WaterRace is a great introduction to the boat racing genre, and you should download the 24 MB demo yourself from the French Touch site and give it a try. The beautiful locations, the unique boats, easy controls, catchy music, and many game modes combine to make a great game. There is very little that I find wrong and I hope that French Touch makes many more games in the future.
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