Developer: Techland
Publisher: Deep Silver
Release Date: Out Now
Players: 1, 2-12 system link/online
Words By:
Nail’d is the latest in a long line of high-adrenalin, no-nonsense off-road arcade racers that remove the fiddly, fussy bits from racing and leave pure gameplay for you to enjoy. Clearly influenced by Sony’s various Motorstorms and Black Rock Studios’ popular Pure, nail’d cuts the crap down to the bare minimum with no back story, no tricks, no cars and no trucks.
You start off with a quick, skippable, tutorial that teaches you everything there is to know about nail’d: Learn the tracks, go fast, use boost wherever possible (‘LB’ or ‘X’), pass through boost gates to replenish your boost gauge and smash other riders whenever possible, and try not to crash; you then decide which kind of bike you want (2 or 4-wheeler), change the paint job, body style, exhaust, engine, handlebars, shocks, wheels etc. You unlock further paint jobs as you progress. You can also choose between a male or female rider and change their outfit etc.
The main mode, Tournament, sees you progressing through a series of championships and cups. You can also “Go Off-Road” with the Time attack mode, which gives you a chance to practise the tracks without distraction, and you can have a ghost racer switched on to give you an idea of how you’re doing. ‘Quick Event’ allows you to set up a single event on whatever track you want; and ‘Custom Tournament’ allows you to make it a simple race, a time challenge or a stunt challenge, you can specify things like number of AI players, whether boost is on or even turn collisions off.
Like most arcade racers it’s all about learning the limitations of your vehicle, where the boost gates are and familiarising yourself with the track. The tracks have countless huge jumps of literally hundreds of metres, and knowing how fast to hit the jump ramps is vital (although you can steer your ATV in mid-air and affect where you land). At first it might appear that the handling is extremely basic because nail’d is a pure arcade racer, but you’ll soon learn that shifting the rider’s weight back or forward is the key to jumping the right distance and making good landings from jumps (rewarded with a “Touchdown” boost bonus). Perhaps surprisingly the game also has one other thing in common with real-life Moto X; you can travel a lot faster on the ground than in the air, so getting while sky-high jumps might look spectacular and even be necessary at times, getting back onto terra firma as soon as possible is always the wise course of action. But then other traits remind you that this is pure arcade game; there’s no rear view (you just have split times to let you know where the nearest ATV behind is) and you can’t even ride around the tracks the wrong way to explore because the game will hastily turn you around and reset to point in the right direction. If you should manage to get stuck somewhere it respawns you pretty quickly where you can get underway again without too much hassle, or you can press ‘B’ to respawn if you end up somewhere weird (I managed to get stuck “in” scenery on a couple of occasions). Serious impacts during races are rewarded with a very quick and often advantageous automatic reset that rarely means you lose a place. The game is very simple to play and user-friendly, even defaulting to the ‘Easy’ difficulty setting (this can be changed at any time), which you’ll probably want to change to at least ‘Medium’, because, for the first few rounds at least, it’s all just a bit too easy to win.
Most of the 14 tracks have some kind of dynamic scenery, falling trees & boulders, the whirling blades of wind farms, massive dump trucks or trains running along tracks, all of which change the possible routes you can take on the fly. There are also dynamic boost gates here and there; you may see one on a moving train, or even dangled from a hot air balloon. There are tracks set in Yosemite National Park, the Arizona desert, the Mediterranean coast and even up the Andes! Some tracks work better than others (for instance, on some the landing areas are difficult to see, and this is often made more difficult by mud being splattered on the screen), some are more fun than others, some are so long (over 3 and a half minutes per lap) that only one lap constitutes a race, some are quite short so you complete three laps.
Multiplayer features include: create a match, quick match and find a specific match. The online racing works well… okay, although collisions with opponents seem to be a very random occurrence and few people seem to be playing it at the time of writing.
A limited but apt rock soundtrack includes offerings from the likes of Queens of the Stone Age, Slipknot, Rise Against, and unsurprisingly Nail’d. The problems is with a soundtrack as limited as this is that even if you really like a few of the songs in it like I do, you soon get sick of them (unless of course you’re one of those morons who likes to listen to the same song over and over and over again.)
Although it’s a lot of fun to play and faster than a fast thing on speed (especially in the insane Boost Madness Mutator races that allow you to boost all the way around the track), nail’d has a few problems; one is the slightly distorted ‘fisheye’ camera that the game uses (which exaggerates the perspective and presumably accentuates the sensation of speed), and the other is an unforgiving set of physics resulting in inexplicable or unfair crashes when you thought you’d landed a jump or avoided an obstacle, resulting in your bike or ATV detonating like you’ve got nitro-glycerine in your tank. Sometimes you’ll use the wrong bit of airspace or just fly too high and the game will arbitrarily decide you’ve crashed, despite the fact you would clearly have been able to make a safe landing. AI riders are also only too happy to smash you to a pulp by T-boning you or landing on you without warning. The ability to “smash” other riders (you gain boost for this too) is hugely under-developed and nowhere near as satisfying as Motorstorm’s melee attack feature-you’re just as likely to get punted out of the way or landed on as land on another rider, regardless of how good you get. But the main problem is the insane rapidity of it all…
Because… yes folks, nail’d is just a bit too fast for its own good and, exciting as it is, at times feels like you’re watching a video on fast-forward, it’s more like Burnout or WipeOut than Motorstorm or Pure in this respect. It seems churlish to complain about too much speed in a racing game but if nail’d ran maybe 20% slower would have made it feel a bit more real-worldly and allowed for more skill without losing any of the thrills. Nonetheless nail’d is a decent quick’ blast’ type of racer with a substantial tournament mode for you to work your way through. I think nail’d will—once they’ve learned the tracks and got a feel for the handling—make most race game fans smile with the insanity of it all and the pure sensation of speed, Just don’t expect it to keep you fascinated for hours on end, unless of course you’re the type of gamer who listens to the same few rock tracks over and over (and over) again.
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