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When I first laid eyes on Carve, I dismissed it as just another cheap clone of the Wave Race series. Then, I had the chance to play it via an OXM demo, and was blown away by how well executed nearly everything about it was. Beyond some control flubs, everything was impressive. So much so that I'm bummed it took me roughly four months to find it. Luckily, fate was on my side, and I snagged a copy of this endlessly fun game.

The basic gameplay should be familiar to anyone who played either the N64 or GameCube Wave Race installments. You race on a watercraft, trying to get first place by overcoming your foes and bobbing and weaving through the buoys that litter the track. If you miss a buoy, you're penalized, so as hard as it may be at times, DON'T MISS THOSE BUOYS!

If you do miss one though, you can try to make up some of the penalization by going for tricks off of ramps, which will net you a boost that lasts longer as you do more insane tricks. Theoretically, this system should be fantastic, and would put it above Wave Race games in this regard. Sadly, the execution doesn't quite work out so well, as the trick controls are a bit too unresponsive for what is needed with the more insane tricks. Thankfully, that's the only glaring problem the game has.

The tracks, which I thought would be rather bland and lifeless, are the exact opposite. Objects will litter your path, and storms and other weather conditions will have a noticeable effect on how your craft handles. On top of that, you'll have to navigate through some well-placed twists, turns, and tunnels. All of these parts of tracks combine to make a whole bunch of memorable sections and moments. I'm amazed that Argonaut did so well with the gameplay, although given their pedigree, I guess I shouldn't be. I would have liked to see more modes here though, as it's pretty much all gameplay, with no extraneous modes to fall back on. While that isn't necessarily a bad thing, here, it hurts the game.

Thankfully, the controls beyond those used for tricks are marvelous. Turning and cornering are a breeze, no matter which character and craft you use. To elaborate on an earlier point, the face button-activated tricks can be pulled off with relative ease, but the ones requiring you to use the left thumstick and/or the buttons are problematic. Why all of the trick functions couldn't have been made equally responsive, to some degree, if nothing else, is beyond me. Hopefully, future installments, if there are any, will remedy this problem. Quite frankly, I'm just glad the controls are as good as they are. Given the budget price, they could have taken the easy way out and just phoned it in with the controls in all areas. Instead, they did a great job with most of the controls, and just flubbed up a little bit.

Visually, Carve is stunning. The water crafts themselves look pretty good, with no inherent flaws to them or anything. The water, which you will be spending a majority of the time looking at, is gorgeous. It has a realistic shine to it, and the reflections off of it blew me away when I first saw them, as it's like looking in a mirror. These effects are magnified during intense weather, such as a thunderstorm, where additional lighting effects are used to show the light off of the skin of the riders. Other little effects, such as water building up and beading up and down the screen add something to the atmosphere that I haven't seen in other water racing games. Even the backgrounds have some great little touches to them, such as trains going by in the distance. Really, the only things in the game that I find visually unappealing are the character models, which look solid enough, but the characters themselves are just way too generic. I'm not expecting much from this genre in regard to characters, but I do expect more care be put into them than a horde of racial and ethnic stereotypes being thrown in and called a collection of characters.

Thankfully, the audio had more care put into it than the characters. The sound effects, in particular, obviously had some time put into them. Pretty much every action in the game has a sound effect, with different ones being used to signify a degree or amount of force being used. Little touches like this add to the game the same way that the beading of water helps the graphics. The only issue I have with the sound lies with the music, which drifts from fun beats with neat lyrics to just lifeless techno. A custom soundtrack feature would have done wonders for the game, but since it isn‘t, the game suffers greatly.

All in all, Carve is a magnificent game that suffers from a few setbacks that negate some of the greatness that is contained within. Should Argonaut ever make a sequel, I'd pick it up in a heartbeat, as this game is far better than most games out there, no matter what the price point. I'm glad they focused on making the gameplay fun to play, and hope for some refinement in that area in the future. The fun gameplay, combined with Xbox live play, should make this a must have for anyone looking for some inexpensive XbL gaming. If you're like me, and don't have XbL, take in the sights and sound of the many tracks and just enjoy the ride. There's a lot of fun to be had with the game, and luckily, it isn't all that hard to find.


Reviewer's Score: 8/10