22-Feb-2007 Bright like Vegas but without the fun From the makers of Carmageddon, Novadrome is car combat for Live Arcade not too far removed from the likes of Re-volt. Set in a garish future world, here's the premise: a robot race called the Novalords (yeah, we know), have kidnapped a load of creatures from planets all across the universe (yeah, we know) in order to compete in Deathrace 2000-esque vehicular combat (yeah, we know - rubbish!).
Still, it's the game that counts and while the set-up, story apart, seems reasonable enough (the thought of a Carmageddon-a-like certainly has some appeal...) Stainless' (gaming) car has taken a wrong turn off the edge of the nearest cliff. Ouchie.
Novadrome packs it all in in terms of options and modes, but fails to capture any of the charm of classic car combat titles like Twisted Metal or even its less good rip-off merchant of a friend, Vigilante 8. At a basic level, it has enough about it to entertain you for a while, even if at no time are you actually excited by what's going on. But the facade soon starts to crumble. Fundamentally, it's all a bit... lifeless, and definitely a bit ugly, and, perhaps more frustrating than that, is the amount of time needed to unlock new vehicles and actually get anything back from the game. Our advice? Try the demo - it may be all you need.
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