Fatal Inertia’s world is one of mega-corporations that sponsor hovercraft-like, rocket powered vehicles raced by faceless, and seemingly fearless, individuals across a myriad of terrain types. It seems though that the future of sponsorship lies in something other than advertising as these corporate conglomerations are as elusive and shy as the men or women piloting their craft. This lack of characters or portrayal of overall setting may make the game a little harder to connect with, but it also plants the swift metallic craft at the centre of the gameplay.
As we’ve come to expect from arcade-like racing titles, the game’s vehicles all come with both strengths and weaknesses. Some are chunky and slower but can take a bigger hit. They’re offset by those more speedy with greater and vulnerability to the projectiles of enemies and hits from the tricky to navigate environments. There are four craft in all and each handles sufficiently differently to justify their existence.
Magnets will fatally slow your inertia.
The vehicles’ handling, and the physics in general, can feel a little ‘floaty’ when you first pick up the controller and take some time to get used to. As you race around the numerous tracks your craft can sometimes feels as though your vehicle is hearing what you’ve told it to do a little late and doesn’t want to fully commit to its orders either. This can become a little irritating, especially when the game demands some precision driving. However you eventually learn to coordinate your piloting alongside these control shortcomings.
The main mode is broken up into different racing series’, most of which contain four races over different areas. Coming first, second, or third in these generally allows you to progress to the next series and also opens up more parts for your vehicle which can be customised in the garage via the menu.
There’s a reasonable arsenal of weapons that can be picked up via delivery pads scattered around the tracks. These can usually be fired ahead of you or behind using both of the bumper buttons. One of the staple weapons are magnets. Once launched, these irritating little blighters find the nearest vehicle they can to stick onto, both slowing it down and also causing damage when they overload. Thankfully they, along with some other weapons, can be removed when performing a spin by double tapping either of the trigger buttons. Along with exploding magnets there’s rockets (some of which can be used to affect the environment or even speed yourself up), a device for slowing down time, one for slingshotting yourself using the unfortunate competitor in front of you, and a few others to keep things interesting.
There are a few different racing events beyond simple ‘get across the line first style gameplay’. ‘Magnet Mayhem’ mode offers up no weapons besides magnets, which you will continue to gain over the course of the race without having to travel over weapons pads. ‘Knockout' mode slowly knocks out the competitor trailing the pack until there is only one racer left to gain the win. ‘Velocity’ mode offers up numerous speed boosting power ups via weapon pads making for a speedy, but dangerous, race. These and a few others different modes offer a bit of variety to the gameplay that would otherwise be lacking in variety.
One issue is the game’s difficulty. When designing a title you’re always going to be stuck between a rock and a hard place trying to please both those that want a more relaxing experience and those that relish even the most daunting of challenges. Fatal Inertia’s difficulty rockets upwards about halfway through resulting in an experience that newcomers to the genre may find a little too hard. This results in you having to spend quite some time perfecting your racing style and knowledge of the courses if you’re to get to the latter stages.
The future's environments are pretty pristine.
Environments consist of a few major locations, each having individual tracks that use the same art assets and provide for some different pathways through their environments. There’s a volcano like locale, a tropical island paradise, a snowy landscape and some forest levels. Each looks relatively good but seem relatively sterile. Almost as if there’s never been another person to set eyes on them before. Vehicle design is also reasonable but not overly amazing. We also experienced a few times when the game’s inertia got a little too fatal for it, resulting in a few moments of slowdown.
Fatal Inertia has Xbox LIVE support and you can play in ranked or quick play matches. The only issue with this is that in all the time we’ve had the game, we’ve not found a single soul that wanted to get involved in some online play, which is a shame as it’s a game entirely suited to multiplayer gaming. LIVE gaming withstanding, it should be noted that there is a splitscreen multiplayer option available.
The futuristic racing genre holds a reasonably well travelled landscape of titles and to stand out in the crowd of games present and past, a newcomer must both deliver some incredible gameplay and also offer up some previously unseen and novel elements. Fatal Inertia tries its hardest to provide a great time, and with some neat weapon types and a few positive gameplay quirks it does a decent job at attempting a scream amongst this pack. Unfortunately for the game, it often still comes off feeling like a generic racer set in times yet to come. That’s not to say it’s bad, far from it, just that it doesn’t offer up gameplay that is compelling enough for those who have plowed through its predecessors to rush out and grab it. That all said, there’s still a decent amount of fun that can be had with Fatal Inertia.
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