The Pit

Nail'd | Hammering Your Eyes Out

BY Burnpavement

Despite strange physics and surrealism, this fast-paced off-road racer is all about high speed.

What Nail'd offers in terms of realism isn't catered for the hardcore Gran Turismo or Forza Motorsport fans, but it combines two simple ingredients, immense speed and insane races with arcade-like controls that make steering your chosen steed incredibly easy.

The bulk of this game is played in career mode, where you can race an ATV or MX bike through several races and courses to win the Nail'd championship. Most races require you to finish three laps around a course. To keep things interesting, several races will allow additional "mutators" to races (such as zero-collision and infinite boost), or through stunt challenges, where judging is based on completion time and the tricks performed. There's also multiplayer racing for up to 12 players online.

Nail'd feels like a typical racing game, but in eyeball-hurting fast forward mode. The twisty tracks are filled with diverging paths, boost points and lots of shortcuts to give you plenty of places to go and numerous ways to get there. The arcade-like controls, with the sensation of blasting your ride past different obstacles on the courses adds to the intensity of the action.

Although Nail'd lacks in realism and longevity, it compensates with its furiously immense speed and arcade thrills. This isn't the most ambitious off-road arcade racer by any means, nor is it the best of its breed, but we certainly welcome this racer after endless nights of GT5.