Originally posted by: WarpZone
I'm going a little against the grain here and giving a big fat huzzah to X. It is probably my favorite racing game, and I think GX is a significant step backward where it counts.
Some of the reasons I like X more:
-Track design.
X has much more diversity and focus in its tracks. Perhaps most noticable is that many of the tracks actually have challenging corners. In GX, challenging corners are very rare, often regulated to the last track in each cup! Many of the others in GX are crazy fast "wind tunnel"-esque courses. Yeah, some of those are nice, and X has a couple too, but GX is overloaded with them. Too many tubes, too many boring straightaways. It's more about boost memorization than actual racing skill and cornering ability. And when GX does have corners, often they are designed unintuitively- it seems to "curve" in the wrong direction more often than not. Though it's a subtle detail at first, it's not present in X.
Also, there's a certain appeal in racing along a track that doesn't just look like a crazy roller-coaster of death, but actually feels like one when you play it. GX lacks a lot of this sense of death-defying as you play- I read comments from a lot of people that they begin to feel 'numb' to the loops and twists in GX's tracks...often only noticing how impressive the course is during replays. In X, the course somehow just feels more entertaining and amazing while it's being played.
-Graphics and general aesthetics
I would also give X the nod here. It sports a cohesive "comic book" look that gives the game a refreshing appearance alongside other racing games. The menu screens are all done in a stylized, 2D-ish flavor (complete with cheesy transition effects between menus!), and a slick, no-bull look to the actual tracks and backdrops. Everything's fast, but everything's also clean.
By contrast, GX's art style seems considerably more ambiguous. At times, character and menu art direction borders on generic, and lacks that feeling of cohesion. The tracks themselves are incredibly detailed, yes, but almost too much so- neon signs, towers and crap alongside the track makes things feel somewhat messy. In a sense, it just feels closer to Wipeout and Extreme-G now, filling tracks with "decorative" polygonal side attractions, losing the unique touch that X engineered.
-Music.
I know not everyone might care for some of X's guitar solos and general sound to the music, but I think it felt more slickly done. A lot of GX tunes feel, well, as messy as the graphics. Just too rough for the tone and nature to the game.
-Collision and AI
GX has too much awkward collision detection and suspicous physics behavior- it's far too easy to be cheaply bumped off the track, crying out "WTF??". I've heard horror stories of flying right through a tube and out into oblivion, and getting lodged between Mute City's pink neon railings wasn't too fun. I never had these problems to this extent with X, and they just make GX harder to play for long periods.
-Random track generator.
X has one, GX doesn't. Nuff said. GX does have more "regular" tracks if you count the AX cup, but most of those aren't necessarily more impressive than any others in the game.
Yes, GX has more "content". It has more characters, more modes, more unlockables, more music (theme songs for everybody!!!), etc. But it has less of the most important thing: the finely tuned, polished gameplay and track design of X. And ultimately, this is why I come back to X instead of GX.
