Review: Avatar Racedrome (Xbox Live Indie)
The Xbox Live Community Games Catalog is absolutely riddled with titles that use Xbox Live Avatars to some degree. And why shouldn’t they? It’s an easy way to incorporate character models without expending much time in development or design time. More than that, however, is giving your customer the sense that they are in the game.
Avatar Racedrome is exactly what it sounds like: a racing game starring your own Avatar. It’s not a kart racer and there are no wacky courses or zany powerups. It’s just your skills against those of your opponents, for better or worse. On the “worse” side of things is racing solo against the computer. It’s unrelenting and unforgiving. That’s not to say it isn’t fair, but it will definitely take time to get good enough to keep pace with the seemingly-flawless computer opponents. To help you in this endeavor is a very nice addition to the game that’s only available in single-player. Pressing the Left Bumper will rewind time up to 30 seconds so you can correct your path or apply a different combination of brake and acceleration to take that turn a little better. It’s a very helpful tool to learn the game physics and tracks.
On the “better” side is the ability to play with up to 8 humans over Xbox Live. This is where things get more fair and fun. There seems to be two or three games going on at any time and I got into one race with 5 people. There are no bots to fill the remaining slots and it’s definitely the best way to experience the game.
There are 16 tracks included in the game, but they really only vary in length and curves. I don’t recall any tracks that had overpasses or anything beyond flat ground. When you set up a race you can pick the tracks, whether it’s ran normal or reverse, and how many laps. I joined one game that was going for 30 laps! I found that a bit unnecessary and decided not to play in that session.
For $1, Avatar Racedrome went above and beyond my expectations. It looks great, it handles well, and it’s got a nice multiplayer mode that should help extend the life of the game. If there was one thing I would like to see in an update is to see the bots in single-player mode not be canned Avatars but rather pull some random ones from my Friends List, like the way Game Room does.
