CART Fury Championship Racing review (PlayStation 2)

CART Fury's soundtrack includes the music groups Outkast, H2SO4, Nullset, and Disturbed. While this is a rather impressive lineup of artists, the problem is that the music doesn't go well with the game. Outkast's featured song in the game is Bombs Over Baghdad, which really doesn't fit with the rest of the game's presentation. The announcer only says a few lines per race, and the sound of the car engines are the same engine sounds we have heard time and again in open-wheel racing games.

The worst part, and probably the most essential part, of CART Fury is its AI. In the arcade mode, you'll usually find yourself having a very difficult time staying ahead of the pack, but once the final lap approaches, winning is not difficult. The simulator mode is where the effects of the poor AI is noticed the most. When a race starts, you're able to keep up with the pack of other cars for about half of the first lap, and then suddenly every other car on the track takes off and speeds past you leaving you near the back of the pack, if not in last place. What makes this worse is that it appears that every car has a predetermined course, so if you are in a car's path while it is speeding ahead, it will smash into you, causing you to wreck. This trend will continue until you are on your final lap, and then every other car suddenly becomes really slow, letting you make your way back to the front of the pack. If your car is tuned right, you can go from last place to first place on the final lap without any hassles, supposing you don't wreck. If you wreck during any part of the race on simulator mode, it seems that winning the race is impossible, as the game will not let you pass the first-place car on the final lap. You can pull up beside the first-place car, but after around two or three seconds of being next to it, the car will dramatically speed off ahead of you like it did during the first lap.

While loading times are something we are used to seeing in disc-based games, CART Fury's loading times are some of the worst we have seen in quite some time. Just about every set of menus throughout the game requires you to sit there and wait while it loads--not just for one or two seconds, but anywhere from five to 15 seconds. In a few of the subgames, your game can be over in five or 10 seconds if things don't go your way, and if you want to retry the subgame, you have to go through all the loading over again. From the time you boot CART Fury up to the time you actually start a race, you will go through at least four or five loading screens.

CART Fury has its strong points, but its flaws heavily outweigh them. Good AI is essential to any game, especially racing games, and CART Fury simply fails in this area. With the game's bad AI, out-of-place music, and long load times, CART Fury causes a lot of unnecessary frustration. Fans of Midway's Rush and Thunder games might want to give CART Fury a whirl, but everyone else should keep his or her guard up.