Fatal Inertia. The name conjures up images of high-speed, danger-fuelled racing. A game so fast and exciting, you'll never want to play another racer again. And, if ever a game ever looked like delivering that in its screenshots, this is it. Fast, explosive and exciting. But the reality doesn't seem to be any of those things, at least after our first couple of hours playing it. Truth is, the near-finished build of Fatal Inertia we've got here seems a bit dull.

The game plays very much like WipEout, only without the smooth, banked curves. The hovering craft bounce on the ground far too much, unless you pull back on the stick at every undulation. The tracks are mostly a little too short to allow for any real speed, bar a few that work best with Velocity mode. That mode does let you get some speed up (check the first clip in our video below), as it offers boost rockets on every weapon placement, but it's not the kind of speed the game needs. The regular modes are really quite pedestrian.