Need for Russia: Greatest Cars from CCCP

Racing games are usually centered around very fast and powerful cars, all of which feature special technology that gives them the upper hand on the track. On the other hand, this also makes the experience a bit less realistic, since not every gets to be behind the wheel of a race car and properly appreciate whether the games respect reality or not.

Need for Russia: Greatest Cars From CCCP is a game that brings a bit of originality to the genre, by including only common, day-to-day cars taken from the Soviet era of Russia. Thus, although they may not reach dizzying speeds or be able to take sharp turns and slide through corners with grace, the vehicles are much closer to anything a normal person might be able to experience.

To go along with the cars, a wide variety of different tracks are available as well, most of which are located in Russia as well, to preserve authenticity. Hence, from the snow-covered country roads in the Urals, to the streets of Moscow, you get to visit different parts of the country, as well as experience the familiarity of Eastern Europe.

Although the game has almost nothing to do with realism, since you can simply bounce from one wall to the other and refuse to turn the wheel in order to negotiate corners, the vehicles are rather slow, which is at least pretty close to reality. Hence, you can be certain that you won't be able to drive a Lada at 200 miles per hour, but that shouldn't hurt the fun factor at all.

Visually, the title uses a decent graphic engine to render the cars, which take advantage of the nice modeling and the credible reflections in order to come as close to reality as possible. On the other hand, the environments could have used a bit more work, since they do not extend too far and the distant lands leave much to be desired.

Need for Russia: Greatest Cars From CCCP's purpose is to remind everyone what video games are all about, which is to have fun and experience new ideas. Hence, even without the flashy graphics and the realistic handling, you can definitely entertain yourself for a few hours with the game at hand.