Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)To feed my Forza Motorsport 2 hunger, I decided to purchase this game. I'm a big fan of Japanese cars. All my cars are Japanese. Import Tuner focuses on...you guessed it...import cars, mainly Japanese brand cars- Toyota, Mitsubishi, Subaru, Mazda, and Nissan. People ask..so where's Honda? Licensing issues prevented Genki developers from including Honda.
This game delivers TONS of customizations. You can basically calibrate and modify your car based on parts you buy. However, buying upgrade parts for your car isn't that easy. All upgrade parts are level-based meaning you need to beat a boss or win races against a few rival teams to get a new level of parts to purchase. Parts don't come cheap so just racing one rival after another won't get you the goods you need once you face a fully-modified car. You'll have to go back and find a rival team you already beat and race him over and over until you get enough credit points to purchase the parts.
The game requires a lot of patience since you'll be pitted against every import car. There are two ways of challenging rivals. You either hit the streets and challenge OR you can go to the parking area and challenge racers there. To beat the game, you'll have to challenge both street racers and those who hangout by the parking lot.
The tracks are based on real highways in Japan. All the the highways have been faithfully recreated in this game. Now...since this is a race along freeway, you won't be using much of your drifting skills here since you won't find any hairpin turns. Most of the turns are like the Exit ramps you take on our Interstate highways here in the US. This should give you an idea on what's in store for you. Majority of the tracks here are straightways, a few exit ramps turns will test your turning skills. Don't be fooled though. You'll be faced with traffic on the highways. There will trucks and cars driving merrily along the highway while you're speeding at 200mph. The traffic will sharpen your skills on avoidance and overtaking. The game is quite tough on errors you make. You hit a car or a railing and chances are the rival driver will be right on your tail.
There are two modes of races here: SP battles and Time Attack. SP battles are like health meters. The farther the rival is ahead of you, the faster your health meter goes down. You hit a railing or a car and that penalizes your SP meter. The object of SP battle is to run your rival's SP meter dry. That means you'll have to outrace him or punish him by trapping him on a lane where a slow moving vehicle is right in front of him and then you accelerate at high speed to leave him behind. You can use traffic to your advantage by nudging the rival car on the side and pushing him towards an embankment. I know it's bad but hey...you gotta win by any means necessary. Time attack on the other hand is simply a race to the finish line. Why it's called Time attack just boggles the mind. This game was made in Japan so expect some translation hiccups here and there. Poorly translated Japanese terms abound in this game so expect to see weird rival names like Betelguese of the Night, Mundane Omnipotent, Cornering Opera, Mundane Zeus, Astellion Flower, and my favorite... Cat X Cat.
Graphics was where I was a bit disappointed. Genki didn't use the full power of the Xbox360. Somehow it didn't look quite next-gen to me. Also, there are horrible frame rate issues. The game just grinds to a stuttering frame rate when you have three or four rivals on screen. There are a few drawing issues as well. Sometimes, while driving, you'll notice that there's just a black empty space at the end of the ramp. Fear not, the game suffers from redrawing issues. But these issues shouldn't deter you from playing this game. AI is something that's a so-so. You will find rivals who drive like Ms. Daisy or sometimes against a rival who drives like Mario Andretti, Nicki Lauda, and Colin McRae. Most of the AI seem to be afraid to take the risk of making sharp turns at full speed. They seem to brake quite a few meters too far from the turn's entry point. As a result, you can easily take advantage of this and cut in front of them.
So...what's a good gaming tip here. Like any other tuner games, there are three things you need to focus on to win in this game: SPEED, WEIGHT, AND HANDLING. That means you need to upgrade your engine, your body, and your suspension. Don't dwell too much on making your car look like Fast and Furiousque. Concentrate first on winning a few races and invest on the three main aspects of the car. ANy part that will make your car 100lbs heavier should be compensated by a body upgrade that will make it lighter. I've beaten this game by using just one car.
Here's what I did: I purchased the Nissan Fairlady (fastest among the cheapest starter cars). I raced the hell out of it and upgraded it. Then I began challenging several rivals over and over again till I was winning 500K credit points per race. Once I got to about 4 million credit points, I bought my favorite and possibly the fastest tuner car in the game: Mitsubishi Evolution IX. I then sold my Fairlady and then upgraded the engine to the highest possible level I could get. Slowly I began upgrading the three main aspects of the car. By the time I got to about 80% of game completion, I was beating every car and rival I was up against. The Mitsubishi Evolution is by far the best tuner car I have ever dealt with, be it Forza Motorsport or Import Tuner. Try the Evolution and win every race.
In closing, this game is highly recommended. It has it's own technical issues but the fun factor is definitely in the game. Go for it.
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Import Tuner ChallengeImport Tuner Challenge is an authentic and extremely customizable street-racing game that challenges racers to immerse themselves in Tokyo's underground to take on the fastest street-racing teams. Players can customize and race licensed import sports cars using real tuner parts and tuning techniques. More than five million combinations are possible in customizing a car's interior, exterior and engine.
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