Arcade racing games deserve more love and, for me, Shox should have been love at first sight. There are no settings to toggle in this game, no need to swap-out tires based on the environment, choose the appropriate transmission settings, or even fine-tune more niche elements to a car like ride-height and suspension sensitivity. You do buy cars appropriate for the single player championship mode, although money and how it works in Shox feels less like Gran Turismo and and more like Juiced in how it ultimately becomes the crux of progression in the game. If you’re feeling brave, you can choose to gamble your hard earned cash from races into winning a new vehicle in a 1 vs. 1 duel. You earn cash by scoring better times on tracks, and lose it by crashing your car which, spoiler alert, will happen regardless of how well you drive. Trust me.
The championships of Shox are built up of six stages, with six car tracks. A podium finish equals victory on each track, simple stuff. Shox does have a bonus time trial objective in the Shox Zones, which are compartmentalised into 1/3s, like tiny time trials, on each track you play. A medal is awarded based on how fast your times are. If you also use the track appropriate car, you score better, triggering a platinum medal and unlocking more bonuses. Getting gold from all the Shox zones in any race will break out the “Shox Wave” which presents a different race, this time against a perpetual wave, keeping up with it in order to earn massive cash bonuses. It encourages reckless driving in order to keep up with it too and becomes high risk, high reward in the process. These Shox zones are a nice little bonus objective that give Shox itself a little more depth than its competitors… Even if the implementation of it is ultimately an utter disaster.
You see, the AI in Shox is relentless in that they ping pong to your position during races, thanks in no small part to the game’s shocking rubber-banding. The AI will also instantly recover from jumps that may otherwise splat you, and you will splat a lot in a Shox race. In some instances, competing cars will actively go out of their way to sabotage your run: Shunting, blocking and even T-Boning you if needed. It is difficult, and not in the “if I try harder I might do better” kind of way and more the “what the hell, that was bullcrap!” Sort of way.
The physics of Shox are likewise just as rage inducing and unfair, even for the most patient of racing fans. The way every vehicle feels is weightless, like Hot Wheels cars being rolled around on a play mat. Any bumps, declines or collisions on a course may lead to your poor car launching into the stratosphere, heading straight to the moon. Naturally, as you progress through the championships, it gets faster and faster, the silliness of the physics becomes that much more evident. Fact of the matter is, the overzealous gravity of Shox gets in the way of virtually every other aspect of the gameplay, and again, not in a manner that could ever be described as the player’s fault. You will find yourself restarting tracks, almost endlessly, because an AI car decided to bump you, rolling your own sideways until it mercifully restarts you earlier on in the track. The fact you can’t even manually reset your car, after plonking yourself back-to-front, is a poor omission itself.
In anycase, Shox is a total letdown, with alot of missed potential. It does atleast look lush on PS2, playing fully frame-rendered at 60 frames per second, there are many visual effects that look impressive for the hardware: Realtime Car Reflections, lens flare, road shaders and coloured lighting which tap into what Sony's system could really do. It is only a shame the presentation falls flat otherwise. The Heads up Display of Shox is quite possibly one of the worst I have ever seen in a racing game with Shox’s garish font staring you down in oversized text reminders, such as during new laps, and often obfuscating the action on-screen in the process of doing so. And if this wasn’t bad enough, the information it presents isn’t helpful: You have no visible reminder of which lap you are on, no lap times (or times needed to beat Shox zones). No time differentials are posted between you and other racers either, which is just plain werid not to see in a racing game. Even the music choices are weird, given there are no licenced tracks, with placeholder sounding tunes to hold you over during race. Very poor.
Don't play this game.
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Any copyrighted footage I use is covered under fair use laws, or more specifically those listed under Section 30(1) of the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1989 and under section 107 of US Copyright Act 1976. This video exists purely for the purpose of research and criticism. I do not make a profit from any uploaded content, nor do I intend to. Thank you for watching.
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