Set roughly 100 years in the future Quantum Red shift centers around sixteen racers –only a handful are available at the start, the rest must be unlocked – who race Single Person Armed Racing Craft or SPARCs. If you’ve seen either Wipeout Fusion or Extreme G Racing you know the basic premise - Go fast, shoot stuff, win. The problem – and it seems to be a problem in the genre not jut QR- is that despite a killer premise, it’s just not all that entertaining.
QR features a host of play modes and options including Quick Race, Time Attack, Multiplayer and Tournament. While Quick Race and Time Attack will help you hone your reflexes and Multiplayer offers up silky smooth four way split screen action, it’s Tournament where you’ll be spending most of your time. Winning – and winning is the only option here – will unlock new tracks and drivers. While the win or lose finality of each race might put some off, it’s countered with a unique way of earning money. As long as your current score is better than the high score for a given track, you get paid. Even if you lose. Cash is spent between races to upgrade items like shield, boost, and weapons.
Don’t get too excited about decking out your SPARC with a bevy of nasty toys. All upgrades are generic in nature. Upgrading your weapon amounts to merely boosting it’s power rating. You can’t actually choose a new weapon or see any difference in the way it operates on track. The same goes for shields and boost. It would have been nice to see a selection of weapons available and upgrades for each one a la Extreme G. Instead it seems to work on a kind of power cell system. Purchasing an upgrade increases the size of your power cell which allows you to collect more of a given type of on track power up. To start off you may only be able to collect and use a power up one at a time. By upgrading you can collect and store several at a time, allowing you to keep a couple of missiles under the hood for when you really need them.
The weapons themselves fall into two categories – standard and homing. Standard weapons are your basic chain gun style guns that spray energy blasts all over the track. Homing weapons are missiles with a somewhat decent seeker head. I say somewhat because they will tend to lock onto a target that is on the far side of an obstacle. Your shot will usually impact harmlessly on the intersecting object instead of the target so make sure you have a clear shot. Even a sharp rise or fall in track elevation will cause the missile to smack into the pavement instead of your victim. Keep this in mind at all times because it can also work in your favor.
Shields are a slightly different affair as they function in two separate modes. The main mode is passive. As you upgrade your shields their rating improves providing greater protection from collisions and weapon attacks. As you race around each track you’ll find yellow poseurs that enable your shield to enter an active mode called “over shield”. When your onboard computer warns you of an incoming attack you can deploy your oversized to take the main force of the damage – sparing your passive shields and extending their life.
Boost is the final piece of the upgrade pie with each successive level providing an extra half second of boost time per lap. Unlike other games in the genre which allow your boost meter to recharge over time or provide recharge patches on the track, QR limits your boost to a fixed period of time per lap. Managing your boost is far more difficult when you know there’s only a second or two of it available. One nice touch however is that boost time will accumulate. Any boost remaining from the previous lap will be added to your new boost. With proper management you can store boost for one long final dash to the finish.
Don’t get too wrapped up in the weapons and gadgets however, because with the exception of your in game nemesis there’s really not a lot of down and dirty battling going on.
Speaking of the nemesis system, don’t get too excited about it either. QR offers one set nemesis per character and nothing you do or don’t do to that person has any bearing on the race or the game in general. While your nemesis will tend to shoot at you more than other characters might, that’s about the end of it. You’ll see the occasional cut scene between the two characters, but its mostly trash talk and posturing. If the developers had taken a page from the EA book and refined the rival system found in SSX: Tricky this may have been something fun to tinker with in game. What happens is you demolish your best friend? What If your last second shot costs your worst enemy a victory? Unfortunately you’ll never know. It would appear that nemesis ratings only matter when it comes to “Nemesis Challenges”. Once you beat your rival in a head to head race you’ll unlock that character in the player select screen. Yawn.
Graphics
We can’t argue with the look of Quantum Red shift, because it looks damn good. Everything is maxed out in terms of detail. Everything that is except for the ships themselves. In the cut scenes they’re amazing, but in game they’re a little bland. Given the high level of detail evident in the tracks themselves and the environments it’s a little disappointing, but it’s made up in terms of little extras. One perfect example are water effects. Yeah, we know – AGAIN!? Yes, again with the water effects, but this time with a twist. It’s not the water itself that prompts the reaction, it’s what it does. Come flying off the pavement and smack the water and your SPARC will take a moment to compensate (SPARCs are hover craft) and you’ll usually kick up a spray. Once that spray hits your view screen it forms water droplets so perfect you’ll be reaching for the windshield wipers. Even more impressive it that it doesn’t just fade away. It slides across your windshield in the direction the wind is flowing. That means some go up while others slip off to the side. You get the same effect during races in the rain. It’s utterly realistic and the single most amazing water effect I’ve ever seen.
Sounds
QR doesn’t have the deepest sound mix imaginable, but you can change that with customizable soundtracks. For those with Dolby 5.1 set ups, prepare to have your ear drums stroked. Despite a sparse range of effects, they 5.1 mix is amazingly deep. Everything comes alive including a sound of rain on your windshield. Sometimes it’s the quality of the effects, not the quantity.
Control
Despite having several difficulty setting that you unlock as you progress, the control scheme always seems to have a neutral balance to it that makes power sliding easy, but controlling your SPARC at high speeds nearly impossible. Once you open the Red shift difficulty setting it’s almost as if you just sit back and try to hit as few things as possible. Control becomes a subjective term at that point. Perhaps by increasing responsiveness along with max speed the feeling of being strapped helplessly to a speeding bullet would have been reduced. Otherwise the control system works perfectly right down to the on screen poseurs having the same color as the controller button that activates them.
Multiplayer
Bored? Grab three buddies and have at it. Mind you – you’ll still be bored. With its weak weapon system and no major differences between the 16 playable characters, multiplayer games show off the hollow points of QR worse than the Tournament mode does. You also lose some of the gee wiz visuals like the awesome water effects. You do get to keep the rock solid frame rate however.
Overall
Despite it’s flaws Quantum Red shift lands a little ahead of the pack of futuristic racers available on other systems. It packs all the speed and visual flair of Extreme G with the exotic ship design of Wipeout Fusion. Unfortunately QR also packs mediocre game play and a ho-hum rival system that add nothing to the experience. Quantum Red shift does have it’s high points and can be an entertaining way to kill off an hour or so, but seeing all the things that could have been make it all the more frustrating. All Quantum Red shift needs to break out is a little more innovation and a deeper multiplayer experience.
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