Craig's Race

As Craig's Race is one of very few games installed on my G1, and the only one I have a shortcut for, I figured I would give it a quick review.

A top-down arcade racing game, the idea is simple: get around the track as quickly as possible.

There is a good choice of controls available - you can use either the tilt sensor, or a combination of keys, trackball and/or touch screen.

To make things more interesting, you don't just race against your own 'ghost' car, but you also race against the ghosts of three other real players that are near you in the rankings, helping to keep the game competitive and interesting.

The races are divided into five groups of tracks, each with their own scoreboard:

• The first set of tracks (USA, Australia, Sweden) introduces you to different terrains - asphalt, dirt, and snow - each of which have slightly different driving characteristics.
• There are currently two quartets of Formula 1 tracks. First is Australia, Malaysia, China, Bahrain; second is Spain, Monaco, Turkey, Great Britain; and there are more on the way.
• For those that like longer races, there is the 10-minute endurance of the Nurburgring, based on the 20km Nordschleife course.
• And finally, for a different game-mode there is the Pink Slips Race. A head-to-head race on a mixed track of asphalt and dirt, where the fastest player wins the car from the loser. The aim, of course, to win as many cars as possible. Rather than being ranking-based, in Pink Slips you always race against the previous person who played, whatever level they might be. The downside to this game mode is that you can only play more than once when others are online.

Whilst there is a choice of vehicles, currently that is between scooter, SUV, and sports car - you'll most likely out-grow the first two quickly and stick to the sports car. Coming soon are a motorbike and an F1 car, which I hope will provide for a greater variety of vehicle choices.

Craig's Race can be challenging - and there have often been times when I just couldn't stay on the tracks - but once you get into it the game is great fun to play, and - with a thousand real-life players around the world - moving up the rankings really does feel like an achievement.

I did want to provide some in-game pictures, but trying to get interesting action whilst also taking photos with a bulky SLR camera is not easy, so instead you'll have to check out the images on the official Craig's Race website, which also has a video to introduce you to the game.