Kinetica (PS2)

In the city of Kinetica, the line between human and vehicle has been blurred. Following a disaster known only as the “E-Fire”, a devastated populace turns towards an extreme form of racing to get their thrills where Kinetic Armor not only allows the spectators to essentially view things from the racer’s perspective, but it turns the wearer into something close to a motorbike. Grasping the wheels themselves and stretched outward, the wearers of the armor are just as much thrill seekers as their audience, traveling hundreds of kilometers per hour across tracks that can see them traveling up the side of skyscrapers or doing huge jumps through space. The armor can be a bit indulgent in its design with lady racers tending to have their lower body unarmored to show off and the big guys are clearly built for crashing into other racers despite the risks, it ending up pretty easy to get swept up in this style of risky racing yourself as you start to learn what this armor allows you to do in a race.

The mix between human and vehicle is important for more than just a striking look for Kinetica’s racers, this blend tying to the racing’s defining mechanic on how you build up boost power. While the Kinetic Armor allows them to build up to incredible speeds on its own, if you want surges of speed you’ll need to invest some time into building up boost through stunts. Hold R1 and start moving the control stick around and your character will abandon their racing pose to start doing flashy tricks, and should you chain these together before releasing R1, you can earn combo bonuses to ensure your boost meter is filled with even more energy. Already the stunt system is great for making straightaways a bit more interesting, these moments where you aren’t left to consider much else instead opportunities to get in a string of stunts to get you boosts for later. However, holding R1 forces you to drive straight ahead, and should you hit anything, even other racers, the stunt combo will end prematurely. Finding moments on busier part of the track to throw in a stunt or sabotaging someone else’s efforts by ramming them give this system even more depth before you factor in that there are also aerial stunts that are far riskier but still rewarding. An aerial stunt may see you spinning or flipping and if you don’t time them properly you can wipe out, losing you the boost and some ground as you are set back some to continue the race. The racers in Kinetica due technically have a drifting ability as well with the ability to get a small immediate boost if you time it right, but at the high speeds and across often tight tracks, the relationship between pulling off stunts and using the gained boosts intelligently ends up the far more defining feature of this high octane racer.

 

Despite the manual alluding to the “E-Fire” disaster that lead to this extreme sport flourishing, the world of Kinetica doesn’t seem to be too down on its luck. The game features three racing seasons where twelve racers compete in three lap contests across 4 race tracks each, there also being some unlockable extra tracks purely for solo and multiplayer races, but the setting for these courses shows a thriving world of the future. There are some dingier industrial spaces, but also flourishing cities with bright lights. There can be an overgrown ruins with ancient architecture, but you can also find yourself on massive gravity-defying racetracks in orbit. What little bits of story you get seem to want to make Kinetica’s racing out to be some underground sport in a bleak future despite everything else making it look like high-end entertainment, but the willingness to vary up the courses despite the lore definitely assists the game in providing distinct tracks that help a lot with one of the game’s most crucial skills to develop: track knowledge. Since you’re moving at such high speeds and squeezing in stunts where you can you already need to be careful not to ram into some barrier that will cause you to lose ground, and hitting a jump poorly can send you careening off into a long fall to your doom. You can at least press Select at any time for a quick reset onto the track so you don’t have to watch your fall or pull yourself out of a jam, but lost speed can be devastating, especially since Kinetica’s tracks often contain shortcuts and alternate paths that can lead to skilled racers getting huge leads that are hard to close. At the same time, Kinetica doesn’t normally concern itself too much with collisions, allowing you to grind against walls without too much penalty so you can move at extreme velocities without being brought back down to earth by the inevitable side-swiping that will come with trying to keep your racer under control.

There are some other tools beyond your stunt boosts to try and tip the scales though. There are boosters on the track itself that will speed you up as long as you ride them, but you can also leech some energy from them for later. Each racer in Kinetica has different stats meaning some might take corners better than others, but a well-timed boost can essentially give you the means to pull off an immediate sharp turn, letting you potentially pick quick but unwieldy racers if you can manage a boost turn. Having such boosts on hand can be more useful than the immediate speed from the boosts on the track, meaning it is an option with some true utility. Yellow Crystals can also be found at set points on the track, grabbing them never guaranteed and certain paths may contain crystals in greater number. Collecting five yellow crystals will start a roulette for a special power you can use such as a brief period of Infinite Boost or a special Super Boost that makes your boost more powerful than usual. Your placement does not seem to impact these as much as you might expect, a last place racer is as likely as a first place racer to get weaker ones like Drafting that lets you get speed from driving in the wake of other racers or Faster Stunts that makes pulling off tricks easier, but while it’s not necessarily the best for balancing, it does mean there is some excitement in putting your crystals together since you might get one of the more useful ones no matter how you’re doing. The yellow crystals not being too easy to grab keeps this system somewhat in check, but there are purple crystals that will immediately grant you a special power and often require pulling off the harder maneuvers or even ignoring other nearby boosts for the chance to grab them.

 

Kinetica’s three seasons of tournament play may sound a bit small at first, but there are a few caveats. To unlock extra racers and the extra tracks, you must place in first in every race during a season. You are given three retries during a season so you can attempt a track again if you fail to meet the mark, but to properly win you will likely have to first practice the tracks separately and learn their ins and outs. Kinetica isn’t brutal per se but it won’t hand out easy wins and you will need to learn the mechanics and layouts to have a shot at the full first place sweeps. Having first place be so important despite the difficulty in achieving it keeps you on the edge of your seat during a race, feeling each mistake more intensely while a victory is a satisfying payoff to the training it took to get there. Multiplayer and track time records will let you push yourself further even though the electronic soundtrack tries to balance more atmospheric trance music with pumping techno. Hybrid’s “If I Survive” is a great theme for capturing the overall feel, building up from a simple beat to dreamy lyrics and finally a pumping assertion of superiority. The selected music seems to aim to set the tone of a mysterious future while holding onto the energy necessary for a racing game.

THE VERDICT: Kinetica tests your mastery of its mechanics with complex course designs that are thrilling to figure out. So many splitting paths and barriers must be figured out despite moving at incredible speeds so you can build up boost through risky stunts or find the helpful ability crystals. Truly clearing a racing season in first place throughout will push you in a satisfying way, your gradual growth as a player transferring well to the action since performance and knowledge go hand in hand so well here. The power system can throw this futuristic racer out of whack at times with big leads sometimes being hard to catch up with, but some dreamy techno eases the sting while the action never loses its edge.

 

And so, I give Kinetica for PlayStation 2…

A GOOD rating. Kinetica’s systems are certainly electrifying and the tracks are wisely designed to play into them in a variety of ways. There isn’t necessarily a wrong path when the road splits, a more rewarding route often more difficult to take consistently with things like a risky jump or an easily missed purple crystal possibly undoing the advantage if you can’t hone your skills enough to hit them right. Sometimes, the weaker route gives you more room for performing stunts, the boost able to recover the lost ground or give you room for things like the super tight turns or a sudden surge of speed later during a section that might have slowed you otherwise. The emphasis on first place does feel like it does a lot to keep the tension high, the meaningful unlockables kept out of reach in a good way so that really understanding the game and its tracks is key to doing more than just scraping by. It does feel like there is room for expansion, some tracks easier to figure out than others or having a route that can tip the balance quite a bit if taken properly, the crystal system feeling like it can be at odds with the action at times. A Burst Attack can disable nearby racers which can devastate since racers tend to cluster fairly often, and if the AI decides to be a bit aggressive towards you, you might be bullied out of those crucial stunt boosts that are needed to keep competitive. The retries being limited does add some stakes to the racing that would be lost by more leniency, but the way the action can be skewed so quickly against you through no fault of your own can undermine an otherwise skill heavy racer that aims to be quite rewarding. Thankfully, there are barriers in place that mean you can come back from a few flubs, those same options that can be used against you bailing you out, the rise and falls it leads to making things a bit more textured than wins earned easily once you get the hang of the game’s core offerings.

 

Kinetica can sit nicely alongside other high speed sci-fi racers like F-Zero thanks to a solid understanding of ideas like not hinging too much of your success on perfect driving. You can grind against the track barriers and recover fairly quickly with the Select button from the roughest moments, maintaining high speeds a thrill especially since you’ll have to work to reach them with smart boosting, stunts, and smart navigation. Its barely present story set-up may try to add a certain edge to the affair and the armor is definitely striking, but Kinetica’s gameplay is the real star, providing constant excitement as it leans to the intensity of its futuristic twist on motorcycle racing.