Butt-Ugly Martians™ Zoom or Doom!™

Published by Vivendi UIP
Developed by Runecraft
Platform: PlayStation 2
Released - Out Now
Price : £29.99

Story driven racers have never really been my cup of tea. Take TOCA Race Driver for example, the story side of it was rather bland and to make matters worse the story, given in the cutscenes, was unsubtitled which is useless for deaf gamers. Butt-Ugly Martians Zoom or Doom! I'm afraid, is exactly the same in that respect. When it comes to the quality of the racing though it's nothing like the Codemasters offering.

Just in case you didn't know anything about the Butt-Ugly Martians (because I didn't before this review) I'll fill in a few details. The year is 2053 and the Martian Emperor, Bog, sent three of his men down as part of his plans to invade the Earth. Unknown to Emperor Bog though, his men B.Bop-A-Luna, 2-T-Fru-T and Do-Wah-Diddy have no intention of invasion and fall in love with Earth's food, TV and music culture.

Emperor Bog has had enough of these three and has decided, with some assistance to bring back the Conqueror's Cup. Whoever wins the Conqueror's Cup will lead the invasion on Earth. Desperate at this news BB, 2-T and Do-Wah enter the competition in an attempt to win the Cup and bring the invasion to halt. An Earth man (and alien hunter) named Stoat Muldoon and aliens Jax The Conqueror, Gorgon and Chitzok are the rest of the contestants.

The game itself is a kind of simplified Wipeout. The vehicles hover and an array of power-ups and weapons can be found on the track and used for or against you. In all honesty the racing is rather lacklustre and the appeal of the game will wear pretty thin in no time at all. In addition to the Conqueror's cup there is a quick race, time trial and speed and battle challenges with multiplayers options thrown in as well. There are three difficulty settings and the first two of these are only for very small children as they are far too easy for anyone who has played a racing game before as they will be miles in front in no time at all, which leads to a very boring experience indeed.

Graphically the game is best described as ordinary and a waste of the PS2s ability. The textures are simple but unlike Wipeout the game does not suffer in terms of framerate. Throughout the game the framerate was very slick with no stutters at all. The various circuits are different enough and should you come first in your Conqueror's cup races then you'll get to enter a drag race on different tracks, which again are raced on different circuits.

We began the review by telling you that the game was a story based racer and the story is conveyed via cutscenes. As we also mentioned earlier the cutscenes are unsubtitled and there is no option to enable subtitles. What is the point of creating a story based racing game without providing subtitles? During the races other racers will taunt you and this is not shown in text either. This all adds up to making a below average game, a poor one for deaf gamers. It's obvious that the game was aimed at children but I think the developers have forgotten that there are deaf children in the world who like to play games and have a right to understand the story content.

Overall Game Rating: 3.0/10
To put it simply it's a very basic Wipeout clone that doesn't offer anything to keep you playing and to add insult to injury, it isn't subtitled either.

Deaf Gamers comment:
Taunts and cutscenes are unsubtitled. It's fair to say that deaf gamers have not been catered for here.