It sounds like fun, and for the first few goes it is. It’s our favourite miniature cars, tearing up the streets, attics and sewers, just as we remember! The controls on whatever car you choose are, annoyingly, a little dodgy - a little too light on the one hand, yet heavy on the other. We’d like to say it was because of the handling of different cars, but this happened to many different vehicles. After a while, we ended up getting rather bored with racing around the track and hearing the same old humming noise of the car… only to win a gold, say ‘yay’ then move onto the next course. It all got very dull, very fast.
It is better when you’re playing in a multiplayer mode, although even then it’s only good for a few quickfire plays, which, as we remember it, was kind of always the case with Micro Machines. Online, the experience is more than a little shallow and faceless – you meet some guys, their initials are displayed, and without a word or any form of interaction exchanged, you play race after race after race. It's really only with a four-player multitap session late at night, after a beer or three with some mates, that the game comes into its own. So good to see that some things never change! Other options, like the Track Editor, are superficial and don't hold your interest for long, like the overall atmosphere in this game. The Track Editor doesn’t allow you much freedom – offering a large pre-set map while you make a course by selecting available hotspots.
Overall, we can’t help but get the feeling that Codemasters is trying too hard to play its nostalgia card with MMV4 at the expense of offering a geniune progression in this much-loved series. Beyond the wild controls of the cars and the power-ups, there’s one crucial aspect that seems to be missing. Character. MMV4 is a very empty game inside. There’s plenty to do, sure, but there just doesn’t seem to be any heart in it – you feel as if you’re playing these races because you simply have to complete them. There’s no drive for you to beat the other computer opponents – they aren’t rival racers, they are just…there.
Computer controlled opponents are usually lifeless, and without a face. We refuse to get drawn into a ‘classic versus modern’ argument, but we will go so far as to say that in previous Micro Machines games, you had a vendetta against the Elvis-a-like quiff-boy because he kept stealing your rep. Or the chunky boy, because he kept charging into you like a sumo. There’s none of that imagination here. The menus, the gameplay, even the track editor, all have a clinical feel to them; as if the modes from yesteryear have been faithfully recreated in 3D, an online mode added, and that’s it - job done. If more effort was spent investing in the feel of the game and the atmosphere, we might have had a much more fulfilling experience. All that said, if you want a solid quickfire multiplayer game for the PS2, then you won't go too far wrong with Micro Machines V4.
SPOnG Score: C
SPOnG can’t understand what happened. Micro Machines v4 is a pretty playable game on the surface, but you realise after a while that someone has ripped its heart out and replaced it with something much more generic. There are some pretty quirky extras such as classic camera modes, and for what it’s worth, MMV4 is a very well accomplished comeback for the series in terms of camera improvement, lack of bugs and consistent gameplay. What Codemasters need to work on now is bringing that gameplay to life, and returning the magic so gamers know they are playing Micro Machines, instead of ‘Quirky Racer #5’.
