The game itself takes place in a near-future setting as apparently people aren't satisfied with the bumping and grinding of cars in a NASCAR race. As the title suggests, pro racing has evolved into a series called "The Survival Race" where drivers operate heavily armed racing machines and drive with wild abandon on tracks in cities like New York, Paris, Tokyo and (our favorite setting) Vatican City. We wonder if the Pope would join in with his bubble-shaped Popemobile.

We played one of the Paris levels in our play test of Death Track: Resurrection which showed off the impressive graphical visuals of the game in style. The title is extremely colorful (something like the Speed Racer movie was) with lots of bloom effects and neon-style signs all around. As you drive through the tracks you will notice various power-ups that you can gather for extra ammo, shields, car repair and more.

As we went through the Paris track we fought off against the AI opponents with machine guns, bombs, rocket launchers and other various items of death and destruction. The damage models for the vehicles are quite good looking and the visual effects when racers are taken out can be quite spectacular at times (indeed we were told the final version will have full support for DirectX10 graphical features). One of the big elements we like is the ability to destroy entire buildings on the track. Not only do the structures collapse in pieces down to the ground they actually open up other track areas that you can drive through.

Unfortunately our demo time with the game was hampered by the fact that the game was set up with just keyboard support which made driving the cars and firing vehicles less than optimal. We kept hitting the wall with just the briefest of turns and many times found ourselves going in the wrong direction. We were told that the final version of the game will include full support for game controllers and game pads which should be the best way to experience the rapid and fast gameplay. While we didn't play this portion of the game in the demo we were told there will be multiplayer support for at least eight players in the final version.

Death Track: Resurrection looks to be a fairly mindless title of fast cars and huge explosions and while our experience could have been better we are betting that having a game pad in our hands would have made our demo far more enjoyable. We hope to get more hands-on time with a more advanced build of the game before its release later this year.