Review: GripShift (Xbox 360)
There's a lot to like about GripShift. Its quirky design aesthetic, the bizarre level design, and the high flying stunt driving. Unfortunately the fun gets bogged down by repetition and a generic racing mode. Originally released for the PSP in 2005, GripShift has made the transition to Live Arcade with a few additions as well as a few things left out. The original game had, according to the website, over 100 levels as well as online multi-player and a level builder. The live version features hi-def graphics as well as some new even more impossible levels and a brand new deathmatch mode. Unfortunately the developers chose to discard the level editor, which would have been a welcome bit of variety.
The Single-Player portion of the game is broken up into Race Mode and Challenge Mode. Challenge Mode is the real meat of the single player campaign and could best be described as a platformer with cars. The missions take the form of increasingly complex obstacle courses that range from incredibly simple to physically impossible. This mode is fun for a while, and every map has three different objectives to accomplish. These objectives are completing the track with a fast finishing time, collecting every star on the map, and finding the hidden GripShift icon. These objectives never change from the first map to the last. It's impossible to accomplish every single objective in one run which means that in order to complete everything you'll have to run the mission several times. At the beginning this isn't really as issue because the maps take about 30 seconds to run. However the later missions can take several minutes to complete which means that it can take up a huge amount of time.
The race mode, in both single and multiplayer, is a rather generic kart racer. Basically the game cribs from Mario Kart in every respect. All the fun off-roading that made the Challenge Mode so much fun is explicitly discouraged. Instead of soaring over the heads of your opponents you'll mostly be trying to blow them up with rockets. Whereas the Challenge portion has a huge variety of quirky maps, the Race portion has only a few rather generic maps. As is often the problem with some Live Arcade titles, whenever I tried to find an online match nobody else seemed to be on. Consequently I wasn't able to try the deathmatch mode, but I've played the rumble mode in Mario Kart, so I'm probably not missing much.
Final Score: 2.5/5 Ultimately the little flaws keep piling up until they overwhelm and strangle the fun out of the game. If you've got too much money and absolutely need to play a new game right now, there are worse ways to spend your money. But you should probably save your points and buy some Rock Band DLC.
What say you?!