Auto Modellista

Some six months after its inauspicious PlayStation 2 debut, Capcom's uniquely cartoony racer skids onto Xbox. It's quirky…it's garish…it's horribly annoying. It's like opening the door to find Carrot Top trying to crash your shindig. (Your likely response: "Who invited you?")

Auto Modellista wears its only remarkable quality on its sleeve—scope those wild, candy-colored, cel-shaded visuals! Yes, infusing the hardcore import-tuning scene with surrealistic graphics makes for one attractive, standout experience. The cars look great, as every exacting automotive detail has been faithfully recreated…and then magically Disney-fied. The resulting look is so bizarre, incongruous, and memorable passersbys will simply have to stop and gawk at the tricked-out 'toon spoilers and comic book-style lines zipping by to represent speed.

Regrettably, these innocent admirers (yourself included) would be ill-advised to actually play the game. The handling is execrable. Someone must have had the misguided idea that an obscene amount of drifting was key to making a good racer, as Modellista sends its cars wildly careening around every corner. Seriously, you do not so much take control of these vehicles—you lose control of them. Prepare to slide around corners, fishtail on straightaways, and spiral into collisions during nearly every race. Weirdly exaggerated wind conditions make the driving even less fun—you'll find it nearly impossible to steer into the gusts of otherworldly force. Overall, the control is so utterly broken that one has to wonder what the developers were thinking.

Copyright © 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in Xbox Nation.