Another fun company from Toy Fair 2010 is 10VOX they introduced me to Tracksters online racing, a game that comes with an actual 1/64th collectible toy car. They have all types of cars that range from American Muscle to tuned-up imports, they bring together car collecting and MMO (Massive Multiplayer Online Game). The Game play is keyboard based and there are different ways to race: Vs. CPU and Vs. Multiplayer's on 10 different tracks with 4 types of environments. The UI (user interface) is very simple, you can gain levels by scoring in the top 3 and as you gain levels you also acquire titles. Depending on how well you did in the race you also get Track bucks, a form of currency for acquiring upgrades for your car and garage. To win more Track bucks, you can perform stunts; the wilder the completed stunt the more points you get, which turn into track bucks at the end of the race. Now in addition to all this, you also can buy card packs and get even better upgrades that range from a B&M shifter, Decals, Damage reduction, acceleration bonus, and much more…a mystery card is sometimes included.
Setup was typical with any MMO: 1st Terms of Agreement, 2nd Register your car with the web-code, 3rd Create your login, 4th General info A/S/L, 5th Email & Newsletter and, 6th Submit. Click on the acceptance link that was emailed to you and you can download Tracksters, which took about 15min. Actual game play is real easy, Accelerate with W, Reverse with S and steer left or right with A/D. You can follow your race progress on a mini-map, you're the yellow dot. There are a few meters in your UI one is a condition meter(green) that measures the health, the damage and wear you have taken lowers it and your car will perform worse(so try to avoid the wall). The other is a Boost meter (yellow) that can be activated by hitting the Ctrl key. While racing you can also get speed boost by passing through a set a rings successfully. If you fall off the track you can short cut by hitting R for re-spawn.
Main menu:
- My Garage – shows you your car and parts in inventory, you can also add the web-code on track cards
- Shops - this is divided into Wheel, Engine, Body , Suspension, Garage, and swap
- Single Player - is of course single player mode alone or Vs Cpu.
- Multiplayer – gives you a chance to test your mettle against 1 to 7 players. You can create your own race event.
- Settings – Music/effect vol. and Video settings windowed or full screen 640x400 and higher.
The good:
The variety of vehicles available are pretty good from American muscle to Rice-burners…eh I mean Imports. They are fully licensed 1/64th replicas and they are very detailed. The game play and UI were very simple and clean, you'll be racing like a pro in minutes. Since the avatars names are controlled by combination 2 words from preselected list of about 150 race or speed related words, you won't have to worry about some fool writing obscenities, I think that is an important feature for a kid's game. My favorite part is there is no subscription fee, you buy the game and cards and you play. That's it.
The Bad:
I had to restart twice since my PCs'(XP) wouldn't recognize the font on the main screen on both computers.
The Ugly:
The whoopin' I handed out to some little kid in France, ha!
Min. Requirements:
- Windows XP/Vista
- Direct X 9c
- 1GB HD space
- Pentium 4 or Celeron (1.8 GHz)
- 64MB Video Card
Tracksters combine Cars, Card packs and, online racing to give you a wide range of entertainment. The cars themselves run about $14.99 USD and the card packs(7 cards) Range from $3.99USD(S1) to $4.99USD (S2). Just for the fact that I can let my kid play an online game and not worry about some weirdo trying to talk to him and I don't have to pay a subscription fee is enough to win me over, So no matter if you like collecting Cars, online game play or collecting cards Tracksters gives you a touch of each in this one. I give this a TOV 4 out of 5 for a having a 1978 Chevy trans-am in gold.