Since I presume everyone is exactly like me, I am sure you all have seen Quad Desert Fury about a million times on a certain major auction site while trying to snap of lots of GBA games on the cheap. You've watched the YouTube clips and have been intrigued by the idea of a game running on a 3D engine on a console that was magnificently underpowered even for its time.
Let me tell you: don't be. Quad Desert Fury is a drag and a half. It wasn't good when it was released and it's not good now. It's graphics make it kind of a nifty curio but it barely even works on that level.
The perspective on 3D GBA games has shifted w/ time. Back in 2003, the graphics on this were inevitably compared to GameCube games, and, yeah, they look awful in that light. Nowadays, people see these things are like, "Oh wow, a 3D game on GBA!" The reality is really a mix of these. Quad Desert Fury is, indeed, a smear of brown pixels across a tiny screen but it's a 3D smear of brown pixels and that was impressive for the time.
Unfortunately, when you push a system to its limits--esp. on something that was a budget game even when it was first released--you frequently wind up w/ a glorified tech demo, which is the case here. After Quad Desert Fury's initial impression, it become clear very quickly that there was not much time or budget left for actual gameplay once the 3D engine was completed.
The terrain is indeed 3D but you don't really feel the hills when you are driving on them. You don't need to take into account slopes of find the best racing line, just point your little four wheeler at the next checkpoint and travel hither, tither and yon over whatever ravine or sheer cliff might block your way. You hold the accelerator down and go, go, go.
Because the AI racers all take the same ill-advised rout, this is actually legitimately amusing for the first few races. You and the AI will bungle into each other haphazardly and it at first it feels like some light-heated arcade racing fun. After a while though, it gets pretty easy to just pull ahead at the start of the race and w/ the AI having no means of catching up to you, you are basically on your lonesome for Quad Desert Fury's seven courses, all of which are created by placing checkpoints on different locations on the same terrain. This is your chance to kick back and listen to the same fifteen second loop of pop punky rock music for the entire hour or so it will take you to get through the game.
Quad Desert Fury is not a fully realized game. It is a decent first impression and nothing more. Even though I don't have much good to say about it, I do think that first impression is good enough to be worth the buck or so you'll wind up dropping on this in most cases. It is not something to look out for but if you run across it on the cheap, it's fun enough to see how bad it is to be worth picking up, which, honestly, is the best you are going to get as far as GBA games in this price range.
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