Speed Busters: American Highways

Speed Busters is a racing game much like Cruis’n USA, sending you tearing around US highways where the goal is simple: be the fastest, win the race, and destroy the competition. Win and you earn upgrades to make your car perform better. It ships with seven tracks and eight cars, with more available to download from the official site.

The graphics are spectacular, and you will need a powerful computer to get the most out of them. The cars drive realistically, reacting and sounding the part when you clip a rival or throw a quick turn, and the environment textures are about the best I have seen outside of pure arcade games: everything looks like what it is meant to be, with nothing left ambiguous. It is a genuinely good-looking racer.

Control depends heavily on your hardware. The keyboard is dull but does the job if it is all you have, the mouse is hopeless for steering, and a joystick handles the car very well (I do not own a wheel, so I could not test one). The game is fun if you like racers at all, but it is not very hard to beat, so once you have won every round it can get boring. If you enjoy online play it is very accommodating, supporting up to six players, with free play hosted on the publisher’s site.

Overall, Speed Busters is a good buy if you have a powerful PC and any love for racing games. The visuals and handling are real strengths, and the online support is generous, even if the low difficulty caps its long-term replay value. Game-wise it earns a solid grade, the graphics top of the class, the controls fine on the right hardware, and the replay value the one weak spot.