After reading so many bad things about Fatal Inertia, I approached with one with a sense of caution. I had my nose peg just in case it really was a stinker, and I had my holy water equipped to ward it off, should it really be a monstrously poor Wipeout clone. To my surprise however, Fatal Inertia isn't as bad as I was expecting - in fact, it's really quite good. And although it has that fundamental Wipeout feel, it is also different enough to define its own game. For a start, Fatal Inertia has some pretty good two-player split-screen modes, something that the console Wipeouts were sorely lacking. Without hesitation, I called upon a friend and we were racing in no time at all.

Whether you choose to race with a friend, play single player with AI, go through the Career, or play on Xbox Live, you're given the option of selecting one of four different looking crafts. Each one handles and controls differently and picking the right one is vital to the outcome of the race. I prefer the smallest aircraft, but then my friend quite likes the people-carrier-sized floating bus. Once you've picked your class, you can also pick from about twenty different colours, so you can almost guarantee that nobody on the course will have the same class and colour combination. While I was a little annoyed at the measly amount of classes at first, the sheer amount of tracks available to race on, combined with the quantity of weapons you can acquire and use while racing, soon made up for it.

When it comes to track design and general graphics, Fatal Inertia is a little hit and miss. The tracks, while there may be many of them, range from downright superb to simply sub par, which is largely down to the fact that there are six or so themes to the many tracks on offer and if you don't like the aesthetics of one particular theme then all the tracks within that theme don't really deliver. I don't really like the look of the magma-themed tracks; they are too dark and dingy, but the snow-themed ones are breathtaking and always left me wanting to replay them. Graphically the ships don't really look all that futuristic; very basic shapes with a splash of colour of your choice. The interface is also very basic too. However, some of the weather and time zone effects on the tracks are brilliant, with shortcuts that consist of tunnels that are hidden and picturesque, and the water, foliage and icy glaciers decorate the more visually pleasing tracks that you'll come back to most often.

Once you've picked one of the race tracks, you're just about ready to start blasting around corners, navigating through small tunnels and steering over or under jagged rocks that protrude from some of the tighter spots in Fatal Inertia. Control isn't something that comes easy in this game however, which makes the learning curve a little steeper than most racing titles. As well as being able to steer left and right, you can also strafe and even roll left and right too. You can pull up on the thumbsticks and fly up a couple of feet, while pushing down naturally makes you fly closer to the ground. Factor in that most weapons you can collect en route to the finish line come with secondary functions and that you must drive through checkpoints, and you've got quite a recipe for racing complexity.

Unfortunately, Fatal Inertia fails to deliver on so many fronts that it's untrue. The single player Campaign seems worthless, simply racing through tracks you can race through on quick race anyway, leaving hardly any incentive to go through and complete it, unless you really want to make slight alterations to one of the four aircrafts. Also, Xbox Live, while supported, may as well not be. I've been trying to find a game for days now, trying at different times and hoping to catch some American players late at night, or some fellow Brits in the afternoon - but it seems as if too many people listened to the journalists who wrote this game off. That's a shame too, because the multiplayer side is extremely fun and very playable. The range of weapons is brilliant; like magnets to throw your opponent off balance, attachable rockets to either give yourself a boost or blast your opponents off course, EMPs to stop nearby enemies navigating tight corners for a couple of precious seconds and smoke screens to block their vision so that they'll hopefully crash and destroy their aircraft. These are but a few of the weapons in Fatal Inertia, weapons that provoke a great response with real players - the trash talking, the tight cornering and the tense eliminating could have made an online experience like no other.

Instead, Fatal Inertia only really shines in the quick races with AI and another friend if you choose. Split screen play is amazingly good fun, but it's a real shame that the developers didn't account for the fact that people might boycott the online play - otherwise we might have got four-player split screen and Fatal Inertia could have made its way onto the weekly game fest line-up, a quick four player frantic race before you jump into a session of Halo 3.

The audio in this game isn't up to much either - at least not the soundtrack. Most of the in-game music is governed by the theme of the track you're racing on, so you'll find that six or seven different tracks with the same theme have the same music - and if that music isn't particularly good, it can really grate. The menus are filled with unidentifiable synth beats and there is simple no piece of music in this game that you'd associate with Fatal Inertia; there's no distinctive themes, and that's a shame. The sound effects are pretty cool though; there's an appropriate sound for every bump, scratch and weapon and it almost makes up for the indistinct music.

If Fatal Inertia came with local four-player gaming then I'd recommend it for split screen play alone, because there's nothing like it on the Xbox 360 at the moment. The two-player split screen, while good, feels a little retro - these days it's all about four people, a pizza and a laugh. If you only have one friend however, then this deal might be up your street - but consider first the mediocre Career mode and the boycotted online play before you make that purchase. Right now, Fatal Inertia is a good purchase at a bargain bin price, but it would take some fatal game line-up inertia to warrant a full price buy and with so many titles coming to Xbox 360 this Christmas, it's unfortunate that this fun little title may very well crash and burn in their wake.

Reviewed by Dexter Pearson for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).