Fatal Inertia Review

By Rob Fahey Published 14 September, 2007

More of a flesh-wound, really.

Version tested: Xbox 360

One of the best things about the new generation of consoles is the free and easy availability of demos - the very definition of try before you buy, right there at your fingertips on Xbox Live Marketplace and PlayStation Store.

However, demos are only a great thing if they actually represent the game that eventually hits the shelves. A great demo for a game that turned out to be dull would leave you feeling pretty cheated, no doubt - but what are we to make of an utterly dreadful demo for a game that turns out not to be that bad by any means?

We've been scratching our heads over that question for a few days now, after taking delivery of final code of Koei's new futuristic racing title, Fatal Inertia. The Xbox Live demo for the game was, in no uncertain terms, bloody awful (something you were all quick to point out when we published a moderately flattering preview of the game a while back).

Yet the game itself, we can now confirm, really isn't that bad - leaving us to wonder why on earth Koei would undersell its own product in this way. Ah, the tangled web of videogame publishing!

Quickly now

Taking its cues equally from high speed racing titles like WipEout and weapon-heavy cart racing games like Mario Kart, Fatal Inertia is a style of game most players will find instantly familiar - a hovering, futuristic racer with lots of explosions. It's also a style of game which has been done extremely well by other franchises (primarily WipEout and F-Zero), which does leave Koei's entry into the genre with a lot of catching up to do.

'Fatal Inertia' Screenshot 1

The future is all about neon - which has the unfortunate side effect of making it look like a gay nightclub.

It's not quite a challenge that Fatal Inertia manages to meet, sadly - and it's unlikely that the developers at Nintendo or Sony Liverpool will be too worried just yet. Fatal Inertia introduces a host of great ideas to the genre, and boasts occasional moments of genius in its track design - but it's let down by some glaring problems with the technical implementation which consign the game to the ranks of "passable fun" rather than "instant classic".

The action takes place in a number of different zones, each of which has a unique visual style - ranging from idyllic tropical islands, via twisting desert canyons and jagged mountain-tops, through to volcanic caves and frozen seas. Each of these areas plays host to a number of different circuits, some of which are specifically balanced for a certain type of play - so you get a few which are easy to navigate but full of weapon pads, some which are designed to test your driving skills as much as possible, and so on.

In itself, that's a nice addition to the genre - but what's even better is the ability to customise your races with a variety of different options and racing conditions. You can choose to race at different times of day, or add an adverse weather condition to the track (a blizzard, a thunderstorm, whatever); then you can select racing options which restrict the types of weapons and power-ups available on the track, or which change the winning conditions for the race.

'Fatal Inertia' Screenshot 2

The water effects are among the nicer graphical touches in the game - especially if you play through the island levels at sunset.

This level of customisation gives Fatal Inertia a surprising amount of replayability - which isn't half bad considering that the game is already blessed with a fairly large number of tracks. The selection of weapons available in the game is also interesting and varied - while you'll be instantly familiar with some relatively dull old reliables like smoke-screens, Koei has done its level best to mix things up with a selection of weapons that play on Fatal Inertia's solid Havok physics model.

So, for example, you've got the tether - essentially a long chain which you can either fire at two enemy vehicles, tying them together and making it likely that they'll both crash, or at a piece of scenery, allowing you to use it to whip yourself around a tight corner. Or the magnets; a swarm of heavy little homing magnets which attach to enemy craft and add drag and crap handling to the mix, slowing them down and making steering sluggish until they're shaken off.

Even some old favourites get an interesting makeover. The rocket seems familiar at first, but it doesn't actually explode when you shoot it at an enemy - instead, it attaches to their craft and fires a powerful boost, which of course will send their vehicle flying into a spin or off at an angle. A secondary fire mode actually clips the rocket onto your own vehicle, giving you a massive boost of speed.

Get a move on

Unfortunately, however, the obvious potential of a racing game with great weapons and a solid range of tracks is let down badly by a few major issues. The first - which is more of a niggle, but worth mentioning anyway - is that several of the tracks could have done with a little more testing, because all too often you'll get lost between checkpoints and have to learn the route through a process of trial and error.

This is a consequence of the game's attempt to provide some very open tracks, across wide terrain - a nice idea, but one which desperately needed to be tempered with better indicators for where the next checkpoint can be found. It's not a total joy-killer, but it's certainly frustrating.

What is rather more of a joy-killer, though, is the buggy track reset button - which is meant to pop you back onto the track when you fly off in the wrong direction, but all too often dumps you in an entirely illogical place. After you've been reset on the track facing a boulder or a wall a few times, only to fly straight into it because you were holding down the accelerator in hopes of a quick restart, this really starts to grate.

'Fatal Inertia' Screenshot 3

Most of the tracks are quite large, and boast multiple different routes and shortcuts - as well as plenty of things to crash into.

It's doubly annoying because each of those smashes into the wall counts towards your damage gauge - a bar on the screen which, when full, signifies a game over for you. Admittedly, if you've taken that much damage, you're probably losing the race anyway, but it's still frustrating to watch your vehicle explode and have to restart because of a bug which should have been caught in testing.

That's not it for technical hitches with Fatal Inertia - because the game also suffers from framerate problems, especially when there are a lot of craft on screen at once. The framerate isn't remotely as bad as it was in the demo, we hasten to add; but it's still annoying to see it stutter in busy sections of the track, especially since it's not like Fatal Inertia is the most graphically accomplished game we've seen, well, this week. A game like this should have a perfectly smooth framerate, above all else, and Fatal Inertia's failure to accomplish this is a serious black mark in its copybook.

It's unfortunate that technical issues like this can drag down a game which genuinely has some great ideas to its name - but drag it down they do, from being an imperfect but very interesting and entertaining racer to being something a lot closer to the mediocre mark.

'Fatal Inertia' Screenshot 4

If you've been waiting for years for a game where you could derail your opponents by putting your balls on them... Then we never want to meet you.

A huge range of customisation options for your craft (some of them purely cosmetic, which is a nice touch for those who just want to build the coolest vehicle possible) and the aforementioned possibilities for setting up custom races mean that there's plenty to see and do in Fatal Inertia, but for many players, the basic frustration of the game's technical problems means that they won't be keen to spend quite that long on it.

If you're a fan of the genre, though, and think you're willing to put up with weak framerate and some ill-conceived technical features in return for trying out genuinely interesting tracks and innovative weaponry - then by all means, put Fatal Inertia through its paces. For the rest of us, though, the search for racing carnage should probably lead back to superior franchises like FlatOut and Burnout.

6 / 10

Read the Eurogamer.net scoring policy
Picture of Rob.

About Rob Fahey

Rob Fahey is a former editor of GamesIndustry.biz who spent several years living in Japan and probably still has a mint condition Dreamcast Samba de Amigo set.

Read more articles from Rob by visiting the Rob Fahey archive page.

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Comments (46) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • The-Bodybuilder #1 4 years ago

    A 2 page review for an average game? You guys must really need the page hits.

    F1rsty.
    Edited by 1 at 14/09/07 @ 11:45

  • Tenaflyviper #2 4 years ago

    Oooh!

  • viper_h #3 4 years ago

    Paper Mario?

  • DDevil #4 4 years ago

    Definitely. I think perhaps it would have been better if the ship was actually some kind of Giraffe from Space.

    Perhaps a review of such a game on EG would be a good idea!

  • dirigiblebill #5 4 years ago

    PS3 version confirmed down the tube, then?

  • Chaote-Imagicka #6 4 years ago

    Yes, but does it have Space Giraffes?

  • Darren #7 4 years ago

    I'm putting £7-£10 toward Wipeout HD on the PS3 rather than wasting £40 on this game, at least I know that game will be excellent as it is based on the critically acclaimed PSP title and will use the SIXAXIS motion controls which should be F.U.N. :)

    The demo of Fatal Inertia was pretty dreadful really... OK graphics and a nice sense of speed spoilt by lots of last-gen pop up, textures drawing in late and a horrid framerate that either slowed down or tore... not a great advert for the Unreal Engine 3 it uses really. The controls were twitchy and the gameplay itself felt bland and unexciting. Nope, I'll definitely pass, thank you!

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #8 4 years ago

    Man, it's really terrible the way people keep going on about SPACE GIRAFFE. There's really no excuse for constantly mentioning SPACE GIRAFFE in the comments thread of all these other games. I'm sure EG will review SPACE GIRAFFE in due course, and then all the SPACE GIRAFFE fans will be happy and can stop incessantly yammering on about SPACE GIRAFFE. Those bastards.

  • Greebo #9 4 years ago


    What were they thinking putting that demo out then!?

    I can only guess that they had to rush it to get it ready for their deadline.

    Still, they must have lost some sales. Better not to have released it at all.

  • Der_tolle_Emil #10 4 years ago

    The Fatal Inertia demo was definetly shit. The Space Giraffe demo however was fun.

  • Stoatboy #11 4 years ago

    @viper_h - Paper Mario review is due on Monday apparently (possibly in the same way that the Space Giraffe review was due the Tuesday after it was released several bastard weeks ago).

  • Triggerhappytel #12 4 years ago

    Was there really ever any doubt that this game would be quite shit?

    It's has had 'average' written all over it from the word go.

  • MasterNameless #13 4 years ago

    As much as I would like a Space Giraffe review to get EG's opinion on it, I think it's funny the way they are holding off, or even not reviewing it, probably just because everyone keeps on about the bloody thing! I've played Space Giraffe anyway, and I quite like, I don't need a review to tell me that. Neither should anyone, as it's free to download and try out, why not download it yourself and make your own damn minds up!!

    And there's nothing wrong with a two page review for a bad game, not that it IS a bad game, an average one by the looks of it... they have to tell us WHY though, and if it takes two pages, it takes two friggin pages!

    Definitely giving this game a miss.

  • Brodie #14 4 years ago

    Rev Stuart Campbell wrote -

    Man, it's really terrible the way people keep going on about SPACE GIRAFFE. There's really no excuse for constantly mentioning SPACE GIRAFFE in the comments thread of all these other games.

    I see the code! We're onto you Campbell ;p

    Well that didn't work did it :D
    Edited by 1 at 14/09/07 @ 12:18

  • pjmaybe #15 4 years ago

    6 is generous for this, as was 7 generous for Heavenly Sword.

    Peej

  • UncleLou #16 4 years ago

    No reason to derail every single review thread with it, though. Becoming a bit old now, really.

  • thedaveeyres #17 4 years ago

    Do gay nightclubs have more neon lights than straight nightclubs?

    Bit of a Jim Davidson comment there.

  • Carrybagma #18 4 years ago

    Space Giraffe?

    Is that the latest game by Jeff Minter???


    :o)

  • Madafunkola #19 4 years ago

    Do i remember correctly that this game uses Unreal Engine 3? It's refreshing to see it being used in a game that isn't FPS, ain't it...

    Sadly that is just about the limit of my excitement for this game. :p

  • Pike #20 4 years ago

    So, the Quantum Redshift of the 360 then. Surprisingly decent futuristic racer that will sell fuck all.

  • Stoatboy #21 4 years ago

    "No reason to derail every single review thread with it, though."

    We haven't derailed any threads, we've just hopped on board without paying, sprayed a bit of Space Giraffe graffiti around, and then got off at the next stop.

    "Becoming a bit old now, really."

    As am I waiting for a Space Giraffe review...

  • Shinji #22 4 years ago

    Do gay nightclubs have more neon lights than straight nightclubs?

    Tacky over-bright day-glo ones, yes. It's hardly a Jim Davidson comment when it's based entirely on experience :)

    (Insert obligatory Where Is The Space Giraffe Review comment here...)

  • BadBoyBonner #23 4 years ago

    If you squint a bit it almost looks like Space Giraffe....

  • Guv #24 4 years ago

    *goes back to playing SlipStream 5000*

  • BadBoyBonner #25 4 years ago

    Tacky over-bright day-glo - sounds like the start of a Space Giraffe review....

  • BobsUncle #26 4 years ago

    I might buy it if they promise to reset the scoreboards like those FUCKING CUNTS AT TURN 10 just did.

    It's just not a racing game until it has a scoreboard reset.

  • Zob #27 4 years ago

    tits

  • Kryon #28 4 years ago

    Shinji, f3rrari is flame baiting over in the Ninja Gaiden 2 screenshot thread, how come you haven't 'silenced' him like you do to miiiguel and I?

    *cough*SDF*cough*

  • SomaticSense #29 4 years ago

    "As much as I would like a Space Giraffe review to get EG's opinion on it, I think it's funny the way they are holding off, or even not reviewing it, probably just because everyone keeps on about the bloody thing! I've played Space Giraffe anyway, and I quite like, I don't need a review to tell me that. Neither should anyone, as it's free to download and try out, why not download it yourself and make your own damn minds up!!"

    Which is all moot, as they have reviewed it weeks ago (5/10), but are just not posting it.

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #30 4 years ago

    Didn't someone link to a Eurogamer.de review that got 6/10?

  • ZuluHero #31 4 years ago

    People do realise that Space Giraffes are shit right? I guess you all just want to confirm the 5/10 that i am expecting huh?

  • Biggles #32 4 years ago

    shame, sounds like a good game fucked up by a few missed deadlines. One thing, I don't get, is why was this game rushed through? It's clearly suffered horrendously from having a rushed demo, and it's not as if there seems to be a huge marketting push or anything that it needs to synchronise with. Stinks of bad management, if you ask me.

  • thedaveeyres #33 4 years ago

    Do gay nightclubs have more neon lights than straight nightclubs?

    Tacky over-bright day-glo ones, yes. It's hardly a Jim Davidson comment when it's based entirely on experience :)

    It was meant to be tongue-in-cheek - forgot the winkey smiley... ;)... there we go :)

  • lasermink #34 4 years ago

    @Pike

    Not really, since Quantum Redshift doesn't have any of the mentioned flaws, and is far better than "surprisingly decent". Better than Wipeout in every way, in my opinion.

  • Eighthours #35 4 years ago

    Anyone heard the news about a Giraffe in Space? No?

    Me neither. I only read EG.

  • smurphs #36 4 years ago

    Sigh...

    As a psychic, I think I'd better use my powers to appease the baying hordes.

    ".....some of you may have noticed the absence of a review of a certain XBL game involving African even-toed ungulate mammals, so here it is in all its (monochrome) pyrotechnic glory.


    Hang, on, I'll get to the good stuff...

    ".....so in conclusion, SG is gaming in its purest form. Buy it now if you value all that is great and good and two-toed in this world. 9/10.


    There you go. Now pipe down.

  • SeesThroughAll #37 4 years ago

    Didn't OXM give SG a 2/10?

  • Wobble #38 4 years ago

    "Man, it's really terrible the way people keep going on about SPACE GIRAFFE. There's really no excuse for constantly mentioning SPACE GIRAFFE in the comments thread of all these other games."

    fixed that for you brodie... coments use html not UBB markup.

  • miiiguel #39 4 years ago

    I don't like Space Girafe.

  • Pike #40 4 years ago

    @ Lasermink

    Well, QR reviewed a tad better, I haven't played the full game myself, I just thought it was a bit similar in that both are good or at least decent games on microsoft consoles in the same genre that will be completly forgotten.

    Edit: What the fuck is up with this Space Giraffe meme? Isn't it just some average shoot em up?
    Edited by 1 at 14/09/07 @ 14:19

  • miiiguel #41 4 years ago

    No it's a Timothy Leary bad trip translated to a video-game.
    Edited by 1 at 14/09/07 @ 14:25

  • spindizzy2 #42 4 years ago

    What is the obsession with Space Giraffe? Affection for the author aside, it's really not that much fun to play is it? I stuck with it a bit but felt like I'd seen it all before many many times. If I want a trippy psychedelic shooter, it's hard to beat Geometry Wars.

  • Fyzzu #43 4 years ago

    I adore Space Giraffe. Definitely not one for everyone, though.

    On a slightly more review-related topic: Good grief, it's been a long time since I've heard the word "copybook". It was never used in schools when I was a lad, which either means Rob's showing his age, or we used some sort of strange alien language instead.

    I hasten to add that they're each as likely as the other.

  • Stoatboy #44 4 years ago

    @spindizzy2: SG is one of the finest shoot-em-ups ever made. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but if it clicks for you it's bloody stunning.

    Seen it all before? No! No you really haven't. It constantly changes the gameplay parameters from level to level, introduces a bunch of unique enemies (like the sublime Feedback Monsters and bastard bloody Rotors), and some of the tricks it pulls on the later levels defy description. If you ever see level 64 in action you would probably swear it was utterly incomprehensible and unplayable. Yet many people (not me sadly) have completed it without losing a life. The game pretty much makes you develop a new sense to replace your eyesight, which is often nigh on useless.

    Geometry Wars is nice enough, but SG is something special.

    And that's not just Minter fanboyism - Rev Stu's not on particularly good terms (to put it mildly) with Minter, but his review of it is probably the best I've seen so far:

    http://worldofstuart.excellentcontent.co...

  • Shinji #45 4 years ago

    From a playability perspective surely the PS2 could re create Fatal Inertia 100%

    The PS2 couldn't do the physics stuff that the weapons in the game rely heavily upon. Visually, too, it would struggle with a lot of the scenery.

    Much like I'm struggling to work out what your point is, but then again, I normally struggle to figure out what the point of your posts is :)

  • Ryze #46 4 years ago

    Therefore, f3rrari, you might like to come join the OutRun2006 Gamers Club, where we race online in Sumo's fine conversions of the amazing arcade game.

    Open to all!