I was pretty hyped to receive Activision's new SUPERCAR STREET CHALLENGE for my PC! Nothing turns me on more, than sexy sleek curves...and a V-12 under the hood! So ride along with me as we dive into this new Racing game from the start. The game concept here, while nothing new, does appeal to the racing genre fan. The ability to design, build, then race your own Supercar will always entice the racing fan, as it did me. The game gives you the option to race one of several current Supercars, including but not limited to, the Pontiac Concept GTO, Vision CTEK K/2, Calloway C12, or the Fioravanti F100, or to create your own Supercar using the Steve Saleen Styling Studio! How cool is that!? Races take place on closed circuits in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Rome, and Paris, again, world class! At this point I am wringing my hands in anticipation, man I want to jump into one of these beauties soooo bad, just take it out for a spin. So lets load up and go!

System requirements look OK, midlevel processor required, along with the latest Direct X drivers, 64 megs of RAM, and a 32 Meg Video Card is recommended. Sounds like the requirements for a good eye catching, speed around the track game, lets see what this baby will do!   Wow, very cool intro video, these Supercars are flying through the streets, sliding around turns, splashing through the rain, great sound track as well. Lets check out the Saleen Styling Salon and build a car! Whoa! What's this? Pretty lame if you ask me. All we get to do is stretch a couple of body panels one way or the other, select the paint color and choose a couple of options such as headlights and mirror placements. What happened to building a car? All we get to do is modify a skin, we don't even get to adjust the suspension or engine past the most basic levels.

 Well, lets drive this thing now and see what it will do. Track is loaded and the landscapes look great, lots of building details, road detail, ect. But I can't get out of the chase view...that's because that's all we get, no driver view (BUMMER), in fact, no other view at all.  We press on the throttle and away we go (provided we have gone through the tricky process of setting up your controller, this particular interface could have and should have been much easier). We hit the first turn and slam the brakes to keep the car from slamming head first into the wall...wait, what the heck is that sound? Sounds like someone dragging their fingernails down a chalkboard...was that supposed to be tire screech? I also noticed that all the cars regardless of their engine, sound the same...hhhmmmmm...strange, maybe they all use the same muffler? OK so maybe you do hit the wall, with a thin THUNK, and no visible damage to the car...oh man...this just keeps getting worse and worse. And another thing, if this is a closed race circuit in a major world city, where are all the spectators? You are careening through deserted ghost towns!

The game is so arcadish in it Gameplay, visuals, and sound effects. Despite having License from some of the worlds Premier Car designers, this game comes off lame and very weak, it could have been so much more. You do get a good feel for speed but without any consequence, you can slam a wall at well over 100mph and drive away as if the car was new, no damage at all.  That doesn't give you much incentive to learn to do anything but slam the accelerator to the floor.

With exception of the car line up, which is very impressive, the rest of the game, including the game engine, is several years out of date. This game is totally outclassed, both visually and in Gameplay, by games like NASCAR Racing 4, 4x4 EVO 2, and Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed. This game will only leave you racing to the store to demand your money back.

Installation: Easy, but long winded

Gameplay: 4
Gameplay is so very arcadish and shows the games console roots, since when do PC games save to a memory card with slots? My comp is NOT a Playstation (well it is, but you know what I mean)! The Gamely is unspectacular, with limited view, weak sound effects, unrealistic effects, and a very disappointing Styling Salon. There should have been, could have been so much more to this game, but there isn't. No fun for the enthusiast, and I fear no fun for the arcade racer either.

Graphics: 5
Graphics in PC games are really getting good, some games are even great, this one is a little, OK, a lot on the weak side, especially considering the system you have to have to play it. The backgrounds look good but limited car views and unrealistic effects leave you wanting for more, a lot more. Given today's PC gaming standards, when you build a game for the racing fan, he is going to want more, more, more! This games gives you enough to want to play a different game.

Sound: 4.9
The soundtrack to the game, while very Techno, is not the standard Midi-type Techno junk, but rather selections played by real bands, and is quite possibly the only good point of the game. The sound effects themselves are very weak and unrealistic. Tire screeches shouldn't sound like someone dragging their finger nails down a chalk board! The engine whine is very generic and is the same for all the cars. The bumps and crashes are also very generic and thin. Sounds, unfortunately, don't add anything to the game, in fact they are a major minus.

Difficulty: 3.5
The only thing really difficult about this game is realizing you paid around twenty bucks for it, and will probably never play it again. There is no real difficulty to the game as I could see, the races don't get any harder, nor the competition any faster. I question why there is a Championship Mode at all. The only real challenge would be in racing your friends in head to head, but they have to be there with you to even do that as there is no Internet play available.

Concept: 6
The concept here, to be able to design, build, and race your own creation, while not exactly new, is totally appealing. Its too bad the game doesn't deliver that to your PC, it would have been wonderful!

Multiplayer: 5.5
I am not a fan of split screen PC gaming, it is difficult to view and control on half a screen, but that's all you are going to get as far as multiplayer capabilities go with SSC. There are no Internet play options for this game (another BUMMER)

Overall: 4.5
This game, on the outside, had so much potential, it is really disappointing to see it offer up so little. Weak Gameplay, poor graphics (for a PC), coupled with even weaker sound effects make for a game that will sit on the shelf. Today's PC gamers are always looking for something new and exciting to play, and are willing to pay for it if it is GOOD. With the capabilities of the newer generation graphics cards, sound cards, and processor speeds, it seems out of place to offer up a game that was so obviously designed for a console system (I.E., Playstation, Nintendo, ect.)
This game had wonderful potential, but fell short of my expectations for a PC racing game.  I would love to see a second version, designed especially for the PC. I would gladly give the game a second chance based solely on the concept.