After a considerable amount of delays, Deep Silver have finally brought Techlands’ nail’d to European retail outlets. As a game that promotes adrenaline-pumping drops and breakneck speeds above ludicrous tricks and feats of fantasy, nail’d is to be considered the other end of the spectrum to Disney Interactive’s critically acclaimed PURE. But being that much of the console market is based upon living-out eccentric fantasies, will the ever-so slight exaggeration of nail’d be enough to convince the gaming audience?
From the very first race gamers partake in, it’s obvious that nail’d’s exaggerated reality only seems slight due to the extreme fantasy of the competition. Were PURE never have been released, nail’d would certainly be the most ‘extreme’ example of off-road
bike racing available on current-generation hardware. As it is, nail’d fits snugly between PURE and THQ’s successful MX Vs. ATV series as a middle-rung, not as tortured by gravity as the latter but far from being as frivolous in it’s depiction of the sport as the former. nail’d is all about aggressive racing across daredevil tracks, and given that remit it’s going to have a tough time convincing an audience that is divided into the two most greatest ends of the spectrum.
The crux of nail’d is its boost system. By finding hidden routes, achieving a great amount of air time (with a successful landing) and driving through the many rings of fire littering the tracks, players will receive additional increments to their boost meter. Once having attained a set level on the meter, players can initiate the boost giving them a much greater top speed, allowing for greater heights and distance from jumps, in turn refilling the boost meter. After a significant amount of investment, skilled players will find themselves able to boost for the entirety of a race once having gathered the first.
Featuring fourteen tracks set across four locations, ranging from Yosemite National Park to the Andes Mountains, and huge array of customisable vehicles, nail’d compliments it’s intense racing action with plentiful variety. That it fails to offer a split-screen gameplay option is a severe oversight: while some games are strong enough to live by their
online gameplay alone, nail’d could surely have done with the extra stimulant offered by on-couch competition that many of its peers lack. As far as the online gameplay goes, nail’d is fairly robust in its twelve-player challenges, with little issues in the way of connectivity and the lobby system.
Visually, nail’d is at its most impressive. Densely populated tracks make for some hair-raising experiences, be it the first or fiftieth time you race upon them, and the variety available between the four locations is a commendable effort. The vehicles and their mounts are well animated, though it’s clear that the variety comes more in design than movement; each rider may look different through a degree of customisability, but each reacts to the knocks and scrapes of a race in the exact same manner. The soundtrack featured in the game is simply fantastic, perfectly suited to the fast-pace of the action and twitch-responses that are needed to succeed in the later challenges.
nail’d has received a fair amount of criticism in the run-up to it’s release, with may suggesting that without the extreme exaggeration of PURE or the realistic foundations of the MX vs. ATV series, it has a hard time being neither one thing nor the other. The truth is that it fits perfectly into that middle-ground, promoting Arcade sentimentalities in it’s gameplay without distancing itself from the simple thrills of a high-speed race. nail’d won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but it certainly deserves the recognition of being a strong contender in the off-road bike racing genre.
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