REVIEW: NAIL'D (XBOX360)

While Sony prepared (and prepared and prepared) take on Microsoft's Forza franchise in the simulation racing realm with Gran Turismo 5 this year, Electronic Arts tapped Criterion to reinvent the police chase with Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, while Activision offered a "realistic" take on the Mario Kart formula. Disney's Split/Second hit the scene, and then wrecked it with its environment-altering destruction.

Meanwhile, Deep Silver and Techland decided to try something different with Nail'd. A romp with ATVs and Motocross bikes, Nail'd eschews realism in favor of fantastic tracks and jumps that take riders hundreds of feet...horizontally and vertically. Toss in small vehicle mods, 14 tracks, an extensive campaign, online multiplayer and a hard rock soundtrack, and Nail'd is ready to roll.

Nail'd gets down and dirty when it comes to its tracks, and the same could be said for its racing, which allows racers to ram and slam all the way from the starting gates to the finish line. Boost only adds to the adrenaline rush, and the game comes packaged with a code to download four extra tracks, another game mode and vehicle parts.

But its ballsy attempt to lay claim to unmarked territory in racing gaming this year is not without its faults. Nail'd definitely isn't the best-controlling racer on the market. Its controls can feel a bit loose at times, and the surface traction has a tendency to just feel off.

It doesn't help that visually, it sometimes looks more like an environment zipping past the vehicle than the vehicle speeding though it. Its offroad racing is visually still a few years behind what Sony did with the original Motorstorm, and its collision detection is, at times, finicky. That's especially concerning, because its tracks aren't exactly intuitive, often strangely designed with unexpected twists and turns.

Also bothersome is the inclusion of a "Stunt" mode prominently featured in the "Tournament" campaign, when the game doesn't truly offer any stunts. Controls in Nail'd are relegated to the right analog to steer, right trigger for gas and "X" for boost. There is no tweaking of the right analog for air stunts or anything of that nature.

Instead, Nail'd offers "Boost Feats." Leaning back for a longer jump or forward to bring the ATV down and get traction helps guide vehicles through gates that earn boost. Doing a wheelie and landing perfectly are other examples of these feats. It's a nice way to earn boosts in races, but stunts? Not exactly. And they make for an incredible awkward mode that just doesn't belong in this game, unless Techland had decided to put in the effort to add real stunts. And as extreme as Nail'd is, those stunts really need to be here.

And while it feels strange to complain about too much content, the Nail'd Tournament just drags on long past its welcome. With just fourteen tracks and essentially two modes (modified by "No Collision" and "Boost Madness" mutators), there is no reason for the Tournament to go on as long as it does. Once it gets to the third tier, Nail'd seems to be simply mining the same content with opponents of higher difficulty. This isn't uncommon for a racing game, but the fact that at that tier everything gets dragged out to multi-race circuits just gets tedious.

The online multiplayer is unfortunately rendered mostly useless, on account of there being no significant community to populate games. This is especially a shame because Nail'd offers no local multiplayer, which seems like a big mistake for a small-caliber title of this nature.

It is poor development decisions such as these that nag at Nail'd during the entire playthrough, which is a disappointment because it can be a very fun alternative racing game at times. It does a great job of giving the impression of speed, and hopping from the top of one air balloon to the next is an experience that won't be found in any other racing title. But instead of making it all work to the advantage of Nail'd, Techland invests too much in bad features, and the results are a mixed affair.

Nail'd ultimately serves as a good rental. For four or five hours, it provides a great deal of entertainment, but beyond that, Nail'd simply loses its explosive edge.

Final Score: C-