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3D Mad Cars, from Chinese developer Huike Technology, is another in a long line of Outrun-inspired racing games for the Pocket PC. Out of the box, the game is pretty flashy, featuring the usual assortment of supercars from Ferrari, Porsche, and several other companies. Graphically at least, the game is definitely one of the better-looking racing titles I've seen, with well-crafted tracks featuring 3D rendered buildings, shadows, and even some interesting lighting effects. The graphics aren't in high resolution and aren't accelerated, but they're about as good as you can get without supporting dedicated hardware acceleration.

But venturing past the shiny packaging reveals a game with a glaring lack of precision. This is first noticeable when selecting a car. While the cars look terrific, the descriptions don't match the graphics (i.e., the Porsche looks more like a Chevy and the Chevy looks more like a Porsche). The car specifications ("VELOCIT," "MOBILITY," and "POWER") also appear to be a bit confused. This may not sound like that big a deal, but the car selections range from consumer sedans to Formula 1-type racing cars.

Once you select a car and get into the actual game (you can select a "match" tournament or a free driving mode), the game does a poor job of recreating the racing experience. Granted this game follows the midnight street racing idea so popular these days in racing games), but there just doesn't seem to be any realism at all. In order to make the game more playable, the car automatically runs at top speed when you press the d-pad up to accelerate and will stay there unless you hit the brakes. Cornering is, well, a bit too easy: you just hit left or right and never have to worry about every losing control of the car.

The physics model appears to rely on a combination of moving the car and sliding the background left and right, and it just doesn't feel like the car is actually on the road. While this type of setup makes the game easier (too easy, really) to play, it's not very engaging. Another factor making things worse is that the game has no audio except for a fairly typical looped audio track that gets irritating after a couple of minutes.

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