DESCRIPTION

A racing game in the purest sense of the word, Running Wild pits six bipedal animals against one another in a footrace across six diverse environments (two of which must be unlocked), with the sole aim of being crowned the fastest animal on the planet. The menagerie of racers includes Mei-Ling the panda, Gwynn the rabbit, Brazz the zebra, General the mountain ram, Coronado the bull, and Boris the elephant. The courses, taking place in remote locations such as the arctic, jungle, and desert, are littered with hazards and power-ups to both aid and hinder your progress. The former is made up of a plethora of obstacles such as pipes, ice and lava pits, thorn patches, and other such impediments, many of which must be cleared using your animal's innate jumping ability. The power-ups provided allow characters to fly; turn into ghosts in order to avoid obstructions; transform the course into mud or ice or even increase in size in order to squash any competitors in their path. Speed strips are scattered about the locales and will provide much-needed boosts when run over.

Should the power-ups not prove useful enough, players can seek out hidden routes and shortcuts in the tracks as they try to shave precious seconds off the clock. As their aesthetics would infer, each animal possesses varying attributes, rated in categories such as speed, power, agility, turning, and jumping ability. The selection of modes consists of Challenge, Practice, Time Trial, Circuit, and Multiplayer disciplines. The latter of which, with the aid of a multi-tap, allows up to four players to compete in split-screen multiplayer competition. Race options can also be customized, allowing players to modify the number of laps from one to nine, among other things, as they see fit. ~ Gavin Frankle, All Game Guide