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Vivendi Universal had several titles on the E3 show floor and one of them was the newly announced Crash Tag Team Racing for Xbox, PlayStation 2, GameCube, and Nintendo DS. We had a chance to go hands-on with the Xbox version and to tell you the truth, it wasn’t all that impressive.

To start things off, the game is being developed by Radical Entertainment who also developed Simpson’s Hit & Run. The game has a cool concept by allowing the player to switch off between being the gunner or the driver, but it had several problems that totally confused me.

When you first start the race, you take control of the vehicle. Half the time I wanted to just drive the futuristic vehicle because it was much easier to do that than being the gunner. The technology they built is called, “Clashing”. You press a button and you can switch between the driver and the gunner that is positioned on top of the vehicle. Driving is self explanatory that resembles many games on the market. Being a gunner puts you in control of blowing your opponents into pieces. You have an arsenal of weapons to choose from, but targeting the opponents is rather difficult and tedious. You have a zoom function, but when you have the AI take control of the driving, he acts like he is drunk. Hence, why I like to drive instead of the being the gunner.

There were many slowdowns in the build, but I’m sure it will be fixed in the final product. At least, I hope. Graphics were ok, but not the best compared to other titles. You’ll be able to play multiplayer with up to eight players VIA system link. No word for online play.

I wasn’t too thrilled. I expected Crash to come out with a bang. Hopefully Vivendi Universal will tweak some of its problems and we’ll have a solid product in the end. It is due out this fall.