A let-down in almost every category, Pocket Racers manages to be especially disappointing in its front-end presentation. The opening movie for Pocket Racers is downright strange. A big truck pulls up outside a house where a party is going on. A phantom figure starts loading cars onto the truck. Then a weird character transforms the people in the house into cars. It's like an episode of Scooby Doo without the funny parts... Who dunnit? Who cares. From the movie, we transition to the game where the cars look like something straight out of a soapbox derby. These are graphics that might have been impressive on the original PlayStation. There are some decent design attempts in the tracks. The concept of racing through a crowded house is neat, but the visuals are cluttered and every object on the screen is impossibly blocky and bland. There is a lack of any dramatic music or exciting visual effects during the race. Even if you can see your way past the generally clumsy interface, there is nothing redeeming during the gameplay.

Racing tiny cars around a house is a concept that's been done before and better. Think of the Micro Machines games... Maybe enough time had passed and the assumption was that the world needed another indoor racing title. And we may, but not in this form. Racing the CPU is truly an exercise in futility. After picking one of several cars and trucks available, you can practice racing tracks, go for time or race for "soul shards" that will redeem your friends' souls before the mystery figure steals them away. Is this the weirdest excuse for a racing game, or what? The tracks are completely full of junk that reminded me of what it would be like to race around my floors. As cool as the concept sounds, the racing action is poor.

Bumping into objects or running over hazard areas will slow you down and make you lose. Driving too fast over some objects will cause you to flip over and wait for the system to put you back on the track... and make you lose. When the controls are as spongy as they are here, it just doesn't make sense for the cars to react so violently. Collecting items and powerups is possible, but you'll find it hard to get past the lack of good racing action. Multiplayer between two or four players requires that everyone own a copy of Pocket Racers. Just because the CPU races are unreasonably hard, doesn't make the multiplayer better looking or more fun. The CPU racers aren't all that smart, but they do go around the track without making mistakes. The human players will make plenty of mistakes. If there were exciting battle features here it might be different, but the weapons you pick up along the way are seriously drab.

As hinted at above, the level of difficulty is just ridiculous. If the CPU or a human player isn't bumping you off the track or causing you to spin out of control, there is something in the track that puts you off. There doesn't seem to be any catch-up feature that would prevent you from going directly to last place from first place. Control of the cars is slippery like soap in a tub. You just can't seem to do anything but overreact, so the slightest twitch will send you into a wall or cause you to miss some critical jump. The sight lines in Pocket Racers are poor due to a really cluttered interface. This means you can't always see the track directly ahead of you. Getting off the track usually results in flipping over or running into a wall and always means losing the race.

Nothing about Pocket Racers is smart. One example is how some menu selections require a double verification. As in, when you select the "I want to switch cars" option, the game pops a dialogue box asking if you want to switch cars. Duh? That was why I selected that Menu option... The multiplayer option just says "Online" which might lead one to believe there's infrastructure at work. Alas, this is a game you can only play with three other people nearby, as long as they have a copy of the game. And you won't want to play with your friends. There are actually a whole lot of menus to work through not that many options. Once you get into the game, the controls are assigned to the system just fine, but with very poor feel and balance. I couldn't stop thinking that Pocket Racers plays like some kind of tech demo or pitch piece. If so, it looks like student work. It doesn't quite square with the Konami name, frankly. I came to Pocket Racers expecting something loose and fun. As arcade and kart racing titles go, I have played a lot that I liked, including the recent Cartoon Network Racing title. Pocket Racers doesn't make the cut - this one is DOA from my perspective. Go back and play Wip3out Pure again... you'll be better off, I promise.