Alarm for Cobra 11 (Crash Time 5): Undercover

As far as racing games go, they can either choose to come as close to reality as possible and make everything more difficult for the average gamer, or they can completely abandon the concept and opt for incredible amounts of fun instead. Naturally, Alarm for Cobra 11: Undercover (or Crash Time 5) has chosen the second option, by allowing you to participate in outrageous races and survive incredible crashes.

The fifth title in the series comes with a variety of improvements over the previous episodes, although it also tries to maintain the same core concepts as them and greet returning players with familiar controls and driving mechanics. However, a great deal of work went into the graphics engine this time around, since the cars and the environments look very realistic and you can definitely lose yourself into the landscapes.

Just like in every new release, the title at hand has its own back story as well, in order to give some sort of purpose to the main career mode. As you might expect, it all revolves around a cop who tries to infiltrate a group of street racers and bring them down from the inside, with a little help from a few buddies of his. Unfortunately, the voice acting has remained just as bad and you can definitely see that there really wasn't any need for a plot in a game like this.

One thing that was emphasized on along the series is the crashing aspect, especially since it will happen a lot if you play for more than a few minutes. Just like before, you can send your opponents spinning and flaming in a variety of ways, making it a real delight to witness the destruction. This new episode even allows you to use a few other gimmicks, such as dropping spikes behind you, in order to completely immobilize the vehicle that happens to run over them.

Despite that, the crashes are still very badly rendered from a graphical point of view, not to mention the laughable physics that sit behind them. The cars just instantly explode a bit, then they are back to normal and you can continue racing, which can get pretty annoying and boring after a while. The vehicles are not officially licensed, which means that they only look like BMW or Audi, but the names and the logo are different.

While it definitely could have used a lot more work in almost every aspect, Alarm for Cobra 11: Undercover can certainly be fun for a while, at least until you get annoyed by the story, the voice acting, or the dull chases that always end up the same way.