12-Jul-2002 As EA Europe prepares to launch its first Big game, we speak to Shox producer Neil McEwan, who takes us for a spin on his ultra-cool arcade racer Coming practically out of nowhere, Shox sneaked out of EA's back door only a few weeks ago, with an autumn release on PS2 and GameCube already visible on the horizon. Normally when this happens, the alarm bells would start ringing and the pink neon of the "Cack Game Alert!" sign would flash like a thing possessed, but Shox has taken us quite by surprise.
It's all about pure, unadulterated, off-road arcade racing. For reference, think Sega Rally, as the development team at EA clearly was when it cam up with the initial design for Shox. Which is a very good thing, by the way. The premise is simple: pick a car, enter a race and fight it out against five other vehicles as you attempt to earn cash to progress and buy bolder and brasher vehicles.
Money can be won and lost in myriad ways, and gambling forms an essential ingredient in the experience. One particularly impressive feature in the fact that you bet money before a race on how well you think you'll do. Mess up and it will strip your funds from the memory card, but skanky gamers won't be able to simply reset and try again as the money comes off the card before the race. Awesome.
Earlier in the week, EA popped round to our offices to show us the latest build of the PS2 version. Producer Neil McEwan was on demonstration duties, and while parading his virtual driving skills in the game, he also answered our questions about his deeply impressive racer:
This is the first EA Europe title to fall under the EA Sports Big brand - what makes it a Big game?
McEwan: We designed the game before it was branded, so we haven't changed anything. We still think there's a big market out there for big arcade next-gen games and that's what we're trying to do - it just happens that it fits more into the Big branding. We're just trying to put a bit of a European spin on instead of having lots of surfing dudes in it.
Do you feel under more pressure to come up with a specific type of game no you have the Big brand?
McEwan: The only thing that I felt was that we were always going to get compared to the most successful game, which is SSX Tricky. We're worried about the game not the branding. We have no style guides for the Big brand, so were not worrying about trying to fit it into any cliché.
Since it's an arcade racer, do you get full replays after each race or have you put in something else?
McEwan: What will happen here is that, instead of a full-on replay, you'll get shown your worst damage moment, your best Shock Zone moment and so on.
How much can you damage the vehicles?
McEwan: We're really lucky with the licence as you can really trash the cars. You can really rip the bumpers off and smash the windscreens out, but the damage doesn't affect the handling - instead, you lose money for damaging the car.
You've cited Sega Rally as a major influence - what is it about the game that you admire?
McEwan: Just the fun, arcade driving and the actual handling of the cars. Anybody can play the game, but finding the right racing line takes practice. We all play quite a lot of racing games, but Sega Rally wears the crown that we want to take.
You can flip the car on the roof but it'll quickly right itself. If you're playing an arcade game you want it to handle nicely and be able to work out how to take corners, but not for it to totally throw you.
How many tracks are there in the game?
McEwan: There's four in each championship and there are four championships, plus we have night time racing. Then there are the eight Shox Challenge races.
How many cars are in the game?
McEwan: 24. We've got cars like the Mini Cooper, Porsche 959, Porsche 11. We've also got a new Porsche in there that's not launched in the States until November, and this will be the first time that anyone's seen it
What modes of play have you included?
McEwan: We have four different championships and an Ultimate Shox championship, which is still in design, but we're playing around with having like a white car boss guy who is really, really fast. In the racing experience you have Shox Zones, which are timed sections of the track where the player can earn more money. This introduces the mechanic of, do you hold of and go for the win, or do you hold back and make your money through the Shox Zones.
We're working on the ultimate goal being the Shox Challenge, and you have to unlock all the cars to get there.
The frame rate is impressively smooth...
McEwan: 60fps is vital. The general public might not realise the difference it makes but if you put two games side-by-side and one's running at 30fps and the other's at 60fps it's obvious.
What multiplayer features have you included?
McEwan: We've actually got four-player split-screen and we're working on a gambling mechanism so one player can say "I'm easily gonna beat you, so I'll go in a Mini, you go in a Porsche and I'm gonna gamble 10,000 points." You gamble your points, put your memory card in and take loads of points away from someone else, so I think that's quite unique.
In four-player, I don't know if you've played Micro Machines, but we've got this split-pad control mechanism where you can control two cars from one pad - obviously they'd have to be close friends or relatives! As well as the normal racing we're also building mayhem arenas, which can be unlocked from the single-player mode. In these we have games like tag and capture the flag, so we really want to appeal to the sort of crowd that would get its mates round for multiplayer sessions.
And you're confident you can keep the frame rate at an acceptable level in four-player?
McEwan: I don't know if you ever played F1 2001, but the guys managed to do it on that.
When you performed that jump, the camera just panned away and it went into slow-motion. Why did it do that?
McEwan: We looked at lot of games that have these drama cam moments, like Simpsons Road Rage and GTA 3, so we wanted to do that to show off the cars and environments and give the player a bit of a breather. I'm not convinced they'll make it into the final game as a lot of people find them annoying. We're actually working on crash ones, too
Like in Burnout?
McEwan: Yeah, but not like the ten times annoying thing. But that's something we wanted to do as it's a nice breather. You only get the drama cam when you beat your previous jump and they'll only be one position on the track where you can do it so it's not that frequent.
Are we going to see Shox on any other formats?
McEwan: We've got a GameCube version about two weeks behind this one and it looks really nice. This game translated really well onto that platform.
Will they be essentially the same game?
McEwan: Yes.
Why did you choose the environments that you did in the game?
McEwan: The reason we've picked those kinds of environments is that they give us different road textures. With the snow track, unlike normally when you slide all over the place and its really difficult, ours is not impossible although you do still slide.
What do you believe distinguishes Shox from games like Burnout and Race of Champions?
McEwan: I actually really like Burnout but its not an off-road game. I just think the market's screaming for a good arcade racing game on next-gen consoles. When I'm working on games I always ask would I buy it? And I would buy this game. The difficult thing for us is to get our message across. Trying to sell this game is a really difficult, as unless someone actually picks it up and plays it, you can't get that message across.
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