There are giant racing franchises out there that allow you to tweak gear ratios, get licenses, adjust down-force and a bunch of other complicated things that may not interest everyone, but nail’d is different. nail’d is your classic off-road arcade racer that pushes speed and thrills while keeping you on the edge of your seat with heart pounding jumps and thumping music.
You start as a male or female driver with little customization other than changing your race gear, but that is okay because all customization is left to your vehicle. In this title you race either an ATV or a dirt bike but can swap out and upgrade parts on your vehicle to boost its stats. Aside from swapping out parts you can also customize your paint job and paint on your parts as well. Quite honestly nail’d is not about fluff, it’s about balls out racing with super big jumps that will make you duck in real life.
There are some huge jumps - you will spend a large portion of your time in the air - but this is a good thing. Nail’d has some of the craziest drops and jumps I have ever encountered in a game, period. You will have the ability to control your ATV in mid air to make different platforms and that will mean the difference between landing and getting “nail’d” or hot fiery death, as I like to call it. Getting nail’d is something that can happen often and will cause you to respawn and delay your racing for a few seconds, so even though it sounds great, you really want to avoid getting nail’d to win.
You can gain boost by driving through fiery checkpoints or performing stunts like popping wheelies or knocking other drivers off the map. This will allow you to boost and get some extra air for those harder to reach paths. In nail’d there are a few modes of play, like Simple Race, Stunt challenge, Boost Madness, Time Attack and Detonator. Simple race is just as it sounds, stunt challenge is a bit trickier as it combined being fast with stunts, and Time Attack is all about posting the quickest time. Detontator is like a game of hot potato with a bomb attached to your back, stunt to get rid of it and not blow up.
There is lots of replay value in this title just from the different routes and short cuts. In each map there are unique portions that can cut time out of your run or lead you to a new portion of the map. The ability to race the route you want is a great feeling in the game and makes it feel very open, but don’t be fooled - you can jump off course and get nail’d.
There are tons of great visuals from the dirt, mud, dust and puddles to the environment you race in themselves. You get to speed through places like Arizona, Yosemite Park and Greece. There is also good variety in environments ranging from forests to desserts, warehouses and canyons. The forests are full of vegetation and trees for you to run into, so don’t worry about courses being simple. Visibility is also impaired by what you drive through, i.e. getting mud on your visor or driving through dust bowls, which makes the experience feel more real even for an arcade racer.
There is full online play which lets you race with players all over the world. One difference is that in online paly when you get “nail’d” it takes a bit longer to respawn. This game actually has a very unique feature: when you begin to play you tell it what region you're in, so for myself I put in New York, USA. After doing so I could track what my ranking was in the leaderboards worldwide, on the East coast, in the US and even in New York alone. This ability to track your leaderboards to your region and play local matches is incredible, and I cannot believe that it had not been used up until this title. Kudos to the folks that dreamed that up, and we can only hope this makes its way into more titles.
It would have been great to see some create-a-track options or some deeper customization for your character and career, but who cares - it’s an arcade racer and there is always a shot at a nail’d two. Grab nail’d for some good old fashioned white knuckle racing that will make your butt pucker from time to time. A solid game and worth the buy or at least a try to check out the “Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm-Flailing Tube Men” that are scattered throughout each race and are comedic to say the least.
- Title: nail'd
- Platform Reviewed: PS3
- Developer: Techland
- Publisher: Deep Silver / SouthPeak Games
- Release Date: November 30, 2010
- MSRP: $49.99
- Review Copy Info: A copy of this title was provided to DualShockers, Inc. by the publisher for the purpose of this review.