Initial D Special Stage for PS2

[Razer]

Sega brings yet another hot game to the masses...in Japan.

I just got this and let me say, being a fan of the anime, that it is really great. Not in the vein of a Gran Turismo (Thank God), IDSS is nothing but fast ass adrenaline racing. With a ton of cars and a decent amount of tracks (that are nothing like any others in any other racing game) this game has me hooked.

It's a REAL street racing game (not of that Fast & Furious-4 cars-shut down the whole city bull) so it's all about one-on-one. You have an arcade mode (based on ...the arcade version. DUH!) and a Manga mode which follows the storyline in the manga as opposed to the anime. The Japanese is extremely dominant but it's a racing game so you should be able to decipher it within an hour or grab a menu faq from www.gamefaqs.com.

The hot points for me are
A) the racing. The computer will push you and due to the close quarters of the tracks there is much more strategy than you'd expect. Blocking is a must. I learned that the hard way after losing a race in the last lap and having the computer block me repeatedly.
B) cars. You won't get to paint them like NFS Underground but they can be modded. The game is based on the series so it's ok (to me) to skip the "cool" decals on the rides.
c) save feature. HUH? Yes, the save feature is tight. See, when you choose a car you have to also decide on a mod package. Most cars have two (plus a Stock model) and some have three. Then you create a save file FOR THAT CAR under your name. As you race and accumulate points the points go for that car only. You're not forced to use a ton of crappy cars or ones you just don't like solely for the purpose of using them. If you just like the Civic then use that, trick it out, and get raw. It's different and I can see some people wanting points to be universal but I like it. The fact that it saves each car setup is also cool.

Bad point: No real 2P mode. You can race Time Attack laps vs a ghost car but even that is only the shadow of the car and not the real car. In veiw of everything else in this game, that is ultra lame. It works as it pushed me to better and better speeds but still lame. If you were gonna doa 1P game then at least have me race against a ghost car and not a ghost shadow. I feel like spirits are trying to devour me.