Ford Bold Moves Street Racing Review

Boldly drive where every driver has driven a million times.

By Warren Dunlop (Nov 8, 2006)

4.0

Mediocre

Pros:

The intro will get you pumped if you bother to watch it; models are the highlight of the game, but the custom team commands and in-game vehicle switching is innovative and extremely fun; each vehicle has decent sound clips for close to everything you'll encounter; rumble of most vehicles will also get the blood flowing.

Cons:

Locations are few; the menus will drive you insane; each level is as interactive as a coma; you'll have to rely on your own soundtrack, solo mode is almost useless, and the gameplay has nothing to offer past the three minute tutorial.

Do you have innovation? Do you have style? Do you have ideas to bring to the racing genre table? Please, oh please, could you submit your resume to Ford. This game is flat out boring, which isn't a very bold move at all. Unchallenging, uninteresting, unfulfilling, unrealistic, and unsatisfactory, Ford seems to have sponsored a title with many great concepts, but with a bad execution.

Besides containing little content to sift through, Ford Bold Moves (henceforth FBM) has aspects to it that make it an easy process, making the game dull, and doing so quick. The line-up of vehicles in the game is separated by classic, performance, and high performance headings, each including six models. You can earn credits by winning tournaments and completing unlocked challenges, which in turn will repair your cars and buy you everything from the 1968 Mustang GT to the 2007 Shelby Cobra GT500. You can only own ten cars at any given time, and customization goes as far as picking between several paint colours. The models are not far from perfect, and do look great in each colour, but the lack of customization with such small selection really hurt this title.

The heart of FBM lays in the Solo Racing and Team Racing tournaments. There is a short tutorial and minimal options, and multiplayer action goes no further than split screen. If you choose a solo career, you will experience the definition of uninteresting. With access to all cars in your current class, firing through this mode with ease is standard. Simply choosing the best stacked model to accentuate your driving style will set you far ahead of the competition, although you will be hindered by the awful A.I., ramming into you with no warning, setting both of you back in the pack. To avoid creating a proper catch up scenario, running into any of the non-destructible poles, trees, boxes, or other common road side objects doesn't throw you into a spectacular crash, more so makes you slow slightly and blink in a reset form.

Setting forth you will move on to the team career, which has many promising concepts if produced in a proper title. The idea behind having a team mate is to help each other out to gain and protect the pole position, which FBM lets you do, switching back and forth between controlling all (yes, it can be more than two) cars, setting commands for team drifts and blocks. The variability in earning cars and having to keep multiple cars in the race makes this side all the more difficult at times, yet fun. Drifting off members is very lax in code, as you don't need to be physically behind your team mate to gain the boost, although the handfuls of courses never seem to have enough variability to really use the move to its full advantage. The courses do tend to vary in minor splits and twists though, making for smaller road widths, which make for very good team blocking opportunities, as your opponents will use the team commands to their advantage as much as you will. The switch between team mates is actually quite a smooth process, simply hitting the directional pad. The commands are quite innovative, but by the final races you will be looking for more, which seems fruitless.

The challenges you can unlock throughout FBM are also the victim of uninteresting concepts, making for little reason to proceed with completing every last one, except for earning cash and buying your dream set of Ford models from the showroom. You'll be faced against time trials (including a little rally), solo and team races, and overtake challenges. Some team challenges call upon the three car team, which really sets the bar in AI high. FBM doesn't make this bar. Commencing a triple draft creates confusion, and will teammates barrel into you, your other teammates, or an opponent, cancelling the draft process.

When it comes to eye candy, the vehicle models are well done, and the few courses available are not bad themselves, although very lacking in any extra interaction. The levels are lifeless with no human interaction, no background movement, and no interactive objects like boxes, poles, trees, et cetera. The damage to the cars is decent looking, but happens in very few steps, nothing ever coming off completely. The damage does very little to the car in the sense of handling and the repair costs are miniscule as such. In team play, as long as you keep your faster car in front, you'll never have to repair it. By the end of a tournament, if you really try to smash up the car, you will feel it, but it just becomes awkward and unpredictable, which is probably depictive of the real thing, but hard to comprehend in a video game that seems so arcade like. The damage does nothing in the sense of extra effects, visual or audible. Extra characteristic effects (such as blurring or tunnel vision) to depict speed are non-existent as well, dulling even the Ford GT.

If Ford Bold Moves Street Racing traded its adverbs for innovation, it would be great, but it didn't. Fan boys will get they're fix, and that's about the extent of FBM's scope, providing little to none entertainment value past the first 30 minutes. Look out junior bowling trophy winners, FBM's going to compete for that shelf space of yours, unless you're into ultimate Frisbee.