Speed Punks

Why i said this? Well, many reasons. First, it was one of the very few games made by their company (Funcom Dublin), before shutting down, made in 3 years without almost any knowledge of the kart racing genre, and trying to make a universe and mechanics on their own. Its clearly that Speed Freaks was meant to be some sort of a franchise but all of that should had to be cancelled. It also didnt help that it had a lot of competition at the time, and you have all of the recipes that means for a "failed" game. And it kind of was, huge development time just to be recieved with mixed reception and few sales. However despite all of that, Speed Freaks has some interesting things going for it.

For starters, it is alongside Crash Team Racing one of the extremely few kart racers that tries to focus on a physics engine instead of having just arcade physics, and it is really impressive. It is not NEARLY as polished as CTR, and i would talk about that later, but the simple fact that they tried to do something different is incredible. The drifting system, weapons and even some of the track design is very simple, but due to how much momentum there is on the kart, this can make the track design seems more complex than it actually is. Every turn or every drift has to be done with caution, otherwise you would lose speed, and oh boi, its so easy to lose speed in this game. Is like for each drift you have to take care of the kart radius. If you drift too much for the left or right after a jump or hit a wall at an specific angle, it all counts. The drifting itself is not as interactive as other kart racers, but it helps filling up the boost system which i would say is the main mechanic of the game. There is weapons, but for the most part, if you are skilled, they are just an small annoyance.

Visually this game is mindblowing. And is amazing how devs that barely had games made before this, showed to be so skilled.

Like i said in many of my reviews, in 1999 the PS1 was kind of starting to show its age. It can do impressive open enviroments much like N64 very well, but it is significantly more difficult. It requires extreme well coding of the culling routines, precomputing polygons or just making sacrifices: flat polygons, not fixing texture warping or zbuffer, adding fog (or a lot of popping), low polygonal enviroments and / or texture quality, or it would simply run like trash if it didnt had at least one of those (PS1 overall seems to be a console specifically designed for more linear games at times). But this is one of the few PS1 games with open enviroments that it feels it doesnt have sacrifices (well... almost). The draw distance is practically infinite, but the levels dont suffer on the detail or the streaming, making it much like CTR, a perfect engine for N64 style games. It even replicates one of MK64 techniques of screen buffer, but in a much more effective way. Artistically is also superb, with characters mixing aspects of Rayman and maybe... Jimmy Neutron? Extremely good use of vertex colours, like in Neon City, or all of the special effects when shooting weapons. This is not only one of the best looking games of the PS1, but it also rivals many late N64 and even some Dreamcast titles. Even though N64 is on paper slighty more powerful, it is just brute force out of control. PS1 had the better devs overall and had way less bottlenecks.

I do have some quibbles though, like some of the loading times are a bit too long, or how there is some significant slowdown in a few specific areas. Also while this game has 24 tracks which may seem like a lot, only 12 of those tracks are available in 3p or 4p MP, and there is zero bots in MP matches which is weird. The game also has only 6 players on screen at once in singleplayer.

I know its unfair to compare it to CTR and especially Naughty Dog, but comparisons are sometimes neccesary, this is a competitive market after all. CTR (ofc other kart racers too) managed to make all of the single player tracks to run in 4p (minus Oxide Station), at higher framerate than the specific 4p ones of Speed Freaks, with much lower loading times and without any reduction on the draw distance, making tracks like Tiny Arena still a showcase of the PS1 capabilities in split screen mode. This special tracks in MP really takes away a chunk of Speed Freaks replayability.

There are some people that think that Speed Freaks looks better than CTR, and while yeah... artistically it holds up, but when analyzing all of the technical aspects, i cant say the same. CTR showed some of the most impressive character models of their era in the cutscenes and podium, it showed a dynamic tesellation that worked in conjuction with the LOD system to make huge maps that barely lose detail, neither close or far away and also didnt suffer from texture warping and that it was reused on PS2 Jak 1 for how impressive it is, and it had practically no prerender stuff in the background (which also affects negatively the gameplay, as its hard to hit powerups sometimes), on top of 8 players, animated water effects, among other things that i mentioned in my other review, on a game only made in 8 months. This is not a criticism of their abilities however, but rather to praise both companies on their own ways. Speed Freaks even does things CTR didnt, like two players on a same kart or real 3d wheels. And is one of the very few 4 player split screen games on PS1, so yeah, it really has its merits.

There is some unlockables but not much more. There is no battle mode, or adventure mode, only three characters, a few videos and the 12 4p MP exclusive tracks for single player... Considering how difficult this game is it is kind of dissappointing, especially considering this was the last time Funcom tried to make some kind of "mascot" characters, and this was their final goodbye.

But speaking about the gameplay problems... Well... I think the main problem in general of Speed Freaks is the learning curve. Although i do appreciate and in fact want kart racers to be more like typical races in a circle, with exploration and hidden mechanics that reward expert players, the game barely does an effort teaching the players this things, in fact, you are forced since race 1 to have some knowledge on the game... Thats so dmb honestly, and it is what it makes this game hard to pick up and play. Some of the races are almost impossible to win if you dont know every shortcut, especially boss races. Although i do appreciate some qol changes that not even CTR has (custom cups, 3 lives per tournament, bosses being infinite replayable even on the menu, etc), i feel like it just ends up compensating for the game flaws, rather than making a difference on the game favour. CTR also has a lot of hidden mechanics (and much more), but never forces the player to play like an expert, at least on the trophy races. The difficulty curve is much less balanced here.

Sometimes you have to know how to use the turbo, like before or after a jump, using the inertia after turning for picking specific items or boost. Its all too precise, and i like it, but this game really needed an adventure mode were i could put all of that in practice... SLOWLY!

Other than that.... Speed Freaks is... a pretty good game, with some really annoying design flaws. I think Speed Freaks 2 could had rival some of the greatest kart racers if they fixed the learning curve, the unfair AI and some of the inconsistences with the momentum of the kart, as it offers some things that werent in the competition. However we all know how it ended. I still feel this game was a valiant effort. They took so much time and money to try to make the best game possible on a company with probably barely budget or employees. Thats great in my book, so this 6 is not a criticism, but rather a congratulation. Goodbye.