Genre: Racing
Developer: Curly Monsters
Publisher: Microsoft
# of Players: 1-4 Players
Memory: N/A
ERSB: Teens
Also On: None

Best Feature: High speed races F-Zero made us love.
Worst Feature: The faster you go the slower the game feels.

Presentation
Quantum Redshift challenges you to display a combination of racing skill and weapons strategy to achieve ultimate victory. Yeah the same way it’s done in XG3. Set 100 years in the future, Quantum Redshift features a new racing tournament of speed that has become an organized sport and is conducted on tracks all over the world. Gamers race on futuristic terrains and compete in grudge matches against multiple opponents, including an archrival. Quantum Redshift delivers high speed racing, 16 vehicles, and 16 tracks, loads of weapons, smart AI opponents, aerial jumps and character-based nuances to appeal to action and racing gamers. It’s like F-Zero, XG3, & Wipeout all in one. But is that a good thing???

Graphics
QR has a fairly generic front end. However, the race graphics are far from generic. The animated details on each craft bring them alive. The airbrakes moving, the nacelles shifting as you steer, the whole thing shuddering when you slam it into a wall... great stuff! Although the tracks don’t approach the ludicrous, looped, banked and generally complex heights of Extreme G3, there’s plenty of background detail and the layouts are interesting enough to hold the attention through repeated races. Water effects are particularly worthy of note. In wet races, you see raindrops leave spots of wetness on the camera lens. As you accelerate, they start to run to the side, slowly at first, and faster as your craft speeds up. The craft race over water at certain points of some tracks too, and if you land hard from a jump into a lake you soak the camera in the same way. It’s a great effect, and really adds to the sensation of speed. Best game to compare it to is WaveRace: Blue Storm.

Sound
Sounds are both a perplexing combination or high-quality and non-existent noises... no announcers or crowd noise and since nothing goes by or occurs while you’re racing there’s nothing else to hear but engines and the resounding booms and lasers from your 2 weapons in 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround Sound (why did they bother?). The music is fine of course I like everyone else, used the music I have downloaded into my Xbox. I guess that’s the reason Curly Monsters didn’t even try to put together a decent soundtrack.

Gameplay
This is where the game falters... You begin the game with your basic set of options and you start to race. And you enjoy yourself you’re having a ball until you realize the tracks themselves lack imagination. I recall only one loop that separates the ENTIRE track design of EVERY track from rally cross on PS1!!! Quantum Redshift would have to go down as the only racing game in which whole sections of track are cut and pasted into another track of a different game, given different weather and textures and sent out to the public. I will not mention the "characters" or "deep-rooted" story they spoke of while it was in development for even if you love the game you know they suck at best and don’t exist at worst. And development of your craft’s abilities feel so unfinished and just plain outta wack. After the start first of all of running only the technical side of the play could inspire me. The rapid framerate speed of 60fps with no slow down in sight. But as good as that is. Every time I speed down a straight away. I seem to slow down. WTF is up with that??? A question only Curly Monsters can try to figure out.

Seem like alot of fun huh? Well its is a little.

Conclusion
It seems the high speed racing genre is at an all time low. Well maybe not? Wipeout Fusion still holds that title. But if you’re still looking to play a high speed racing game. You can A) Be an ass and buy Wipeout Fusion. B) Be good gamer and buy XG3 (GCN version) C) Get F-Zero on SNES, N64, or GBA. Oh only have an Xbox huh? So be a good boy and use the new Blockbuster slogan "Rent It, Like It, Buy It"!!!

~ditto~