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What happens when you take an excellent idea, a possibly good graphics engine and screw up implementing it? You get an extremely frustrating game for the player. Tokyo Highway Challenge (THC) is one of those games. The idea behind THC is simple, you are a Japanese guy with a car way too powerful to use on the streets therefore you go up to the expressways late at night and challenge other drivers to small, quick races. So where does it go wrong?

Graphics

All the driving takes place at night (an small annoying point, in my opinion) therefore a lot of the eye candy goes with nifty little lighting techniques. All lights leave a blaze across the screen, while this may initially seem a little overdone, it looks excellent in replays and it slowly grew on me. You can see how the effect is employed in the shot to the right. All the street lights have a halo (although this is a 2D sprite), and your headlights dynamically light the cars in front of you (but not the scenery, which sometimes looks very strange!).

So, where do the graphics go wrong? For me, the modelling is just not what it should be. The Dreamcast should be able to handle models with at least 3-4 times the polygon count that THC employs - cars are better modelled in Gran Turismo. All the cars have a slightly caricaturish look to them. Also, I really don't like the headlight effect - its seems to me that they are high-intensity strobe lights not headlights! I think Crave uses a 3D model to emulate the headlight effect, and while this works most of the time, you will sometimes see the headlights higher than the road! These quirks aside, the graphics are excellent, it is just the modelling that lets the game down.

Gameplay

There are over 150 opponents to play in different gangs, and each gang then has a leader and a group of 4 elites. This gives you more than enough opponents to fight. So, now the important bit - where do you do all of this? "On the Japanese expressway." You've mentioned that, anywhere else? "Nope, you can go in the other direction if you want!" So, wait there's one track?! "Yep"...that is singly the worst part of the game. A game that promises so much variety falls flat on its face by only having one track. The developers could have kept it in Japan, but added other scenarios like through the Roppongi area late at night, or down by a river - somewhere slightly more interesting than total highway.

This huge gameplay quirk aside, I'll move on. After you have completed your race (basically, race until you get bored) then you can use your money to buy a new car, buy new parts for your car, even change the colour (to any colour, by using RGB slide controls!). This is quite neat, obviously no where near the level of Gran Turismo, but at least it gives you the option. As of yet, I've seen little difference in how my car behaves due to improvements I've added, but the handling tweaks definitely have an effect.

This leads me to my next point - the physics model. This is another game that allows you to fly into cars at 130km/h and come out unscathed. It has no effect whatsoever apart from the slow you down, but even then it doesn't slow you down that much! The cars all handle noticably different, but they all have an arcade feel. There is no handbrake, just an accelerate, brake and left/right. There's not even a reverse! There is probably a good reason for this, since the developers deliberately ensure you cannot go backwards for any amount of time. I found this to be really annoying, since I'm one of those carnage-cravers. On to my next point.

What would most people really like to see in highway-based racing game? Lot's of carnage when things go wrong! Large multi-car pileups, and poor civilians crashing into each other. THC doesn't allow you to drive on the wrong side of the road, or even go the other way like I mentioned! Limitations like that put me off a game.

So, great graphics, original gameplay but badly implemented. Artificial Intelligence?

Artificial Intelligence

The ambient AI is also good, cars will brake when you are in the way, overtake if a car is going too slow etc. One thing I would have liked to see the AI use is using civilian cars to their advantage, speeding toward a civilian and swerving at the last minute in an effort to startle the opponent behind them, etc. This is a picky point because overall I found the AI to be challenging.

Conclusion

	7.9
	Platform: Dreamcast Liked: Interesting idea, feeling of speed. Disliked: Plain modelling, one track, badly implemented, headlights. .: Buy at Amazon.co.uk :.