The Italian Job
Game based off of a movie, you can guess the results…
Tags: The Italian Job Categories: PS2 Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Andrew on Sep 11th, 2003
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| The Italian Job (title page) | |||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Action | No | ||
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There’s a simple rule about video games, anything based off of movies is going to suck, and with very few exceptions, it’s a pretty good rule. So what of The Italian Job?
Well the game itself is based off of the same story line and shows various scenes from the movie. For those that haven’t caught this mild Hollywood hit, A group of thieves pull of a heist in Venice of gold bullion bricks, but are double crossed by one of their member who kills the old man leader and then tries to kill the rest of the group. The rest survive and take back the gold and take revenge on the malefactor.
The game itself follows the story and takes the part of different racing missions from point A to point B involving various cars, but primarily the Cooper Mini, popularized in the film. There are various modes such as Story, Stunt, Circuit Racing and Free Drive.
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Each mission is time based, with points also being given for completion, stunts, running over specific objects and air time (points being deducted for car destruction). Each mission is graded on a A-F scale, with a grade of C or better needed to move to the next mission. While the missions themselves offer very little variety, they are enough to keep you interested, even if they do resemble Crazy Taxi a bit too much.
Over all, there are 15 story missions, 5 stunt levels, 11 cars, and 10 racing tracks. The problem being that almost all of the levels are small in design and rely on the same few city blocks being reused over and over. Most of the missions can be completed within the first try or two – there are however, some (evading the cops) that can be a bit more frustrating as the multitudes of opposition can take their toll on the player.
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The controls of the game are simple enough, with basic turning, braking and cornering maneuvers. The game does not feature super difficult turns and overall has a very arcady type feel.
The game has a very basic multiplayer mode focusing on two-player driving against each other in various points around the city. Not much to write about.
The graphics in The Italian Job are a bit disappointing, with very little crash graphics, or car damage for that matter. The cars are mediocre, and the city basic. The game feels like it was rushed out in order to match the movie’s buzz, and they hoped that cross merchandising would make customers overlook their lack of development on the game.
Then again, that can be said for just about any game based off of a movie.
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The sounds are also unrealistic, with almost no time being spent on crash audio.
Overall, it has to be said that this was a great chance to make a decent game, both because of the movie, but also because the movie premise could translate well into a game. Climax studios seems to have missed the mark on this try. Maybe if there was a bit more time spent.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
Simple controls |
5.6 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
Lack of depth Lack of crashes Lack of Mark Wohlberg to do voice overs |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| While not the worst game in history, the lack of anything meaningfull in this game means that at best you should rent it. | |
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Tags: The Italian Job
Posted by Andrew on Sep 11th, 2003 and is filed under PS2 Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
