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Maybe you’ve read some reviews about this game already? Yes, Quantum Redshift is pretty much a successor to the “Wipeout” series – but not from the same company or publisher. Quantum Redshift was developed by Curly Monsters Ltd. and published by Microsoft Game Studios. For those of you not familiar with the old Wipeout games, Quantum Redshift is a futuristic racing game with a focus on extreme speeds and snazzy graphics. You’ll race in one of sixteen hover-racers and weave your way through up to nine tracks. Along the way, you’ll collect points and cash that allow you to upgrade your ship’s systems for more speed and enhanced weapons.

At first I didn’t notice the glaringly obvious shortcomings that became so apparent once I started progressing through the game and it’s so called “storyline”. Quantum Redshift is a spectacular game on the outside… but has the personality of Apple Corp’s Steve Jobs on the inside (ultimate prick). Like many arcade style console games, as you progress through the game, you’ll unlock more tracks and vehicles. At the start, you’ll have about six tracks open and eight characters along with their respective ships/cars/hovercraft/what the frag ever you decide to call them.

There are four modes in Quantum Redshift. The modes are: Tournament, Time Attack, Quick Race and Multiplayer. Let me complain... err talk about Tournament mode first. Tournament mode pits you against five other AI controlled characters in a never-ending series of races on a small number of tracks. Your progress is measured in a percentage. It took me, roughly, to ‘3% complete’ to realize that this game was about the most repetitive, lifeless, annoying yet mildly addicting game I’ve played in quite some time. The biggest problem is the lack of tracks. There are only 8 to start off and let me explain further here... There are actually 16 tracks total but this is totally misleading. For each racer, you have five levels of difficulty. Easy, Normal, Expert, Master and Redshift. Each level of difficulty increases the speed at which you race and also increases the number of laps for each race and the aggressiveness of your opponents. At Easy skill level, you’ll only need to win a few tracks to complete that difficulty level. The same goes with Normal. Once you complete Normal, you’ll unlock your characters ‘rival’ character and the next level of difficulty (Expert) for all characters. Complete Expert with a character and unlock Master. Complete Master and develop carpel tunnel while you try to beat the ‘Redshift’ difficulty level. You’ll soon discover that you’ll end up racing the same 8 tracks over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over (get the point?). This is the problem is the method used to unlock the tracks. I said there were 16 total just a second ago. Well, yes. But in order to unlock the other 8, the second half, you have to complete Redshift difficulty with EVERY character. Only a person with the attention span of an immortal could achieve this, especially after you worked your way through each individual skill level for multiple characters, THEN you discover how the game actually works in regards to unlocking tracks. For each and every goddamn single character, you’ll could end up racing “Solar City” twenty million goddamn times if you want to beat all five levels of difficulty for that character alone. Taking this approach to the game is worthless. The only thing it will get you in the end is a ‘100% complete’ record and trust me, it isn’t worth it. My suggestion is to go through with ONE character and work your way through each level of difficulty until you unlock the Redshift difficulty (it unlocks for all characters). Then go through with the remaining characters and (try) to beat Redshift with each character so you can unlock the 2nd half of this game. Oh, but they do try to break the monotony by making note of each characters special ‘home track’, in which they apparently are supposed to have some sort of advantage on? (Maybe not) Then you have your ‘rivalry challenge’ races in the latter skill levels where you race against your bitter, archrival then watch the smack talk fly at the split second cut scenes before and after the race. This game was really ‘cut-and-pasted’ together and that’s totally obvious once you spend about a half hour playing it.

There are 8 characters to start off with (7 unlocked, actually) and each have their very own rival character (batteries not included). You’ll unlock the character’s rival by completing the Normal difficulty level or above with that character. So that means 16 characters in all. You’ll have to play through Tournament mode to unlock all the characters and a few extra tracks for the other modes. Before and after each race, you are... I don’t want to say treated, more like subjected, to a 2-5 second cut scene of the ‘storyline’. Yes, they actually referred to it as a storyline, when it’s nothing more than one or two sentences of awkward, cheesy, cliché banter between your character and another. Unless you’ve read the characters bio, it will make zero sense. Each character is supposed to have a “deep and rich background” – If you play this game, I’ll let you decide that one for yourself.

Winning races isn’t your only goal. Your racer is equipped with weapons, shields and turbo capabilities. During each race you can collect power-ups that charge your weapons and shields. You have typical ‘dumb fire’ weapons, homing missiles and protective shielding. Once your shields are gone, you’re toast – you loose instantly. Depending on what level you’ve upgraded your weapons to, they’ll become more powerful as you pick up consecutive power-ups. The more upgraded your weapons, the more power-ups needed to fully charge them. You can fire your weapons after picking up just one power-up or wait and build them up in order to do more damage. When you get a clear shot, you can unleash a flurry of pain on your intended target. If someone has a clear shot at you, you’ll see an ‘Attack Warning’ message flash on your HUD. If they’ve fired, you’ll hear a warning indicator and you’ll have anywhere from no time to a second or two at most to hit your shields or take damage – time to react depends on how close they are to you when they fire. Once you use your weapons or shields, you’ll have to pick up more power-ups before you can use them again. Turbo’s are recharged at the start of each lap. When you buy an upgrade for your turbo system, it will give you more turbo time, measured in seconds. You can save up your turbo power and use it all at once if you like, or spread it out throughout the race. Turbo’s are most useful when you run into a wall or get caught up on an edge (which happens a lot, especially in the later difficulty levels), allowing you to reclaim some lost time. You’ll find leads in later difficulty levels scarce and your turbo power will be the only thing that keeps you in the race as you bounce off the walls like a pinball and hit corners that totally stop you dead in your tracks thanks to the steady increase in speed but lack of increase in handling.

While racing, you’ll score points by attacking and eliminating opponents, picking up point bonus power-ups, getting air-time off jumps and setting track records. These points translate into dollars (usually) that you can use to upgrade your ships systems, as mentioned above. Buy more powerful weapons (not new, just more powerful), longer lasting shields or longer lasting turbo boosters.

Multiplayer mode allows you play up to 4 people at once. Unless you have a large TV, you may find it difficult to play more than two at a time due to the speed of the game and having to play it in such a small portion of the screen for each player. Two player split screen is bad enough, but when you get 3 or 4 players, it gets ugly. Alas there are no Xbox Live capabilities either. I wouldn’t mind seeing a Quantum Redshift 2 with twice as many tracks (which shouldn’t be a total BITCH to unlock), a REAL storyline, more gameplay options and XBL play.. I’d probably buy it. You can also do a Quickrace which lets you race against AI controller characters on any of the tracks that you’ve unlocked in tournament mode. Last, but not least is Time Attack mode. You’ll race against the clock, or against your ‘ghost’ ship. There isn’t much else to it.

Graphically, Quantum Redshift is a mixed bag. The tracks look great, but lack that certain living, breathing atmosphere. There isn’t anything going on, except the race. They went all out and rendered some great graphics and solid frame rates, but it came at the cost of a lifeless game. The miscellaneous effects are pretty dazzling and slightly make up for the lifeless arenas. The soundtrack is very professional but there’s only like two songs (or maybe it’s all just the same one song, I can’t tell)! You’ll likely want to use your own soundtrack (Xbox rules!) after the umpteenth million time you’ve heard the same song as you race the same tracks umpteen million more times.

You can tell this game was rushed. There aren’t any bugs or glitches that I openly identify - there just isn’t that much gameplay here. There was nothing currently out there that filled the demand for “Futuristic Wipeout type game” for the Xbox so I have a feeling that was partly the cause of this unfinished, cut-and-pasted game. Rent it, it’s worth that at least.