At a glance...

nail'd review

Sometimes you have to wonder if the people choosing game names are deliberately trying to break websites. Last year Disney put an inconvenient forward slash in Split/Second: Velocity, playing havoc with our URLs, and now Deep Silver's nail'd features an apostrophe that is sure to break some part of my coding. I believe it is the only explanation for why game developers come up with such silly names. After all, Deep Silver and Techland's manic off-road racing game features an almost deliberate lack of nails...

Racing games are definitely in vogue again, with the arrival of Gran Turismo 5 (finally!), F1 2010, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, and many more in recent months. But none of these make a good comparison for nail'd's (eurgh) mud-slinging antics, and instead we have to look back to the likes of Pure and Fuel. Pure was actually Black Rock's game before Split/Second and the comparisons are easy to make; both feature a mixture of ATVs and motorcross bikes and feature events across a variety of mud-stained outdoor courses. Where they differ most immediately is in the handling department. Vehicles in Pure feel like you are fighting the ground to get around the course, whereas in nail'd, it's as if someone has strapped a rocket on your back; yet you can seemingly make any turn without ever needing to employ the brake.

The question is whether this is a bad thing. On no level does nail'd ever pretend to be anything close to a simulator, so by instead delivering a very, very fast game which any human can handle and enjoy, Techland have rightly put fun at the forefront of their aims. Although we do wonder if the game was accidentally stuck at 1.5 times regular speed and left there when it was realised the action was all the more intense for it. Mid-air control is equally whacky as you seem able to guide your vehicle pretty much wherever you fancy, but again it's certainly no worse off for allowing you this freedom.

It does, however, have very few tricks up its sleeve. Or indeed, no tricks at all, as unlike Pure which features multi-button combos to pull off in mid-air and provide boost, nail'd has none of that. You steer, accelerate, brake (or not), and - with exception to a couple of shove buttons - boost. Turbo power is obtained by driving through gates, knocking away opponents, or achieving a perfect landing. The game does seem to like providing a good chunk of boost action, and you can find yourself holding down the turbo button almost as much as you'll be holding the accelerate trigger. You'll get your head round this in less than a lap, and then you've seen all the options.

On offer are the racing game staples of tournament, single race and time attack, and nothing particularly innovative besides this. There are mutators which aim to mix up the individual races, but unfortunately there's only two present; 'Boost Madness' which gives everyone a full turbo bar all the time generating some fun, and 'No Collisions', which is rather unexciting. There's certainly the promise of more here which nail'd fails to deliver on. The tournament mode is the main single player focus, but there's no career here, and progression is the old fashioned "finish this, unlock this" approach, consisting of collections of single races leading up to a multi-race event. Occasionally you'll have to compete for points, earned in the same manner as earning boost, but generally it's just the ordinary race with odd use of one of the mutators.

In favour of nail'd is the wide track selection over four different environments. Each provides a rather pretty backdrop, and a wide expanse in which a good selection of courses are presented. Some are courses requiring 3 laps with a few twists and turns along the way, but pleasingly a large number are point to point races with unpredictable routes. In fact, the deliberately rough nature of the course design, with trees plonked in the middle of the racing line and trips through tight spaces, can lead to thrilling adventures on your ATV or bike, but they also make the routes difficult to learn and perfect, and ultimately leave you vulnerable to crashing into things quite often. Thankfully the respawn time is quick, although your placement back in the line can often be a little too generous; on a few occasions I found myself better off for having messed up. Driving the wrong way is also a common issue, with signposting just as bad as British country roads. This combination seems to send the message that you're there for the ride rather than the race.

The vast lands and the rough courses evokes memories of Codemasters' Fuel, an open world off-road racing game so big it couldn't adequately fill it. You could, however, make your own way through a race, heading whichever direction you preferred, while in nail'd you have wide expanses but you're always taken through prescribed courses with only a few alternative routes, and you never get to see the beautiful countryside properly.

Probably a more troublesome comparison for nail'd is Sony's PS3 exclusive Motorstorm: Apocalypse. While the series may have shifted out of the traditional off-road arenas that Techland's game inhabits, it's still a game that embodies the same high-speed arcade thrills, and does so with a greater sense of 2011. Motorstorm embraces a more modern approach to the single player, that minimises the clumsy collection of menus, and will keep you engaged far longer. nail'd also includes online multiplayer, which can be enjoyable, but you'll be hard pressed to find people to play with.

All in all, nail'd is a pretty uninventive title that feels like its from a different era. The single player modes are a typical affair, with a tournament that's unlikely to engage in the long term. But in it's favour is a refined sense of fun. A manic game that can produce really enjoyable races across some of the craziest courses I've ever seen. And for that we salute it, albeit cautiously.

Ratings

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