With the keyboard or a game pad you get abrupt changes in direction, and with a joystick you get a wide dead-zone with skid-inducing margins of control that leave you forced to overcompensate by steering early or planning on a slide to get you through a corner. With the aforementioned tendency for the AI to take huge advantage of any driver mistakes, this is yet another area where the frustration will quickly mount.
The graphics in POD shine -- not only is the environment beautiful, but the 3Dfx version is a marvel to both play and look at. The racing is fluid and fast, and the graphics engine is ultra-responsive to the smallest movements and adjustments. The demo is worth looking at just to see what the next generation of racing games looks like, as there really isn't anything like this on the market right now. Only downside: some of the supposedly futuristic cars look more like skateboards having a bad hair day or rejected Hot Wheels design prototypes.
Then again, it's the future, and nobody would have foreseen what a Gremlin looked like 20 years before it was unleashed on the world. The audio in POD , as in most racing games, is a frenetic background track with the usual vroom-vroom car stuff thrown in.
No bonus points for innovation here, but no penalty for annoying announcers or cheesy voice-overs either. Human opponents are definitely where it's at in POD -- although getting synched up with them is an adventure.
The Ubi Soft website currently has a beta version of an Internet multiplayer client supposedly new and improved as of June 12 , but unfortunately, you can't get it yet, because as of this writing their website has returned an error for 10 days running when we try to download it. Courses are enormous, too. Some take up to three minutes to lap--and that's with you cruising at mach one! Most tracks are rich in shortcuts and alternate routes, kinda like a supersonic Beetle Adventure Racing.
The game requires plenty of control Finesse; you must master powersliding for later courses, which can get a little too fast and stomach-churning for easily frustrated gamers. The need to buy pit droids and new and junked parts adds some welcome strategy, too. Don't expect to beat Championship Mode with Anakin alone a bit of a bummer if you want him to be the hero. You need to experiment with all 23 podracers to find tie best one for each track.
It's as impressive as it is dizzying. At times it feels out of control, especially in two-player mode. There's a frustration factor, but for the most part it handles well enough to get away with it.
Creative tracks and upgradable pods serve the game well. Star Wars as well as racing fans should buy this game. Having seen the Ep. I trailer, I have to admit didn't really think the N64 could handle this game. Let's just say Racer put the smack down on me. The game moves immensely fast; so fast, at times I couldn't believe I was actually controlling my pod through all the twists and turns.
The tracks are beautifully textured, but a lot of it will fly by too quickly for you to appreciate. My only issue with Racer is that the frame-rate suffers a bit in hi-res mode.
Even though Racer is based on what is easily the most-anticipated movie of all time, you don't have to be a Star Wars fan to enjoy it Racer is one of the fastest-paced games I've ever seen on any system, immersing you completely in the Star Wars universe. You'll actually be afraid to close your eyes while playing. The only thing missing from this game is a Story Mode, but the graphics and gameplay more than make up for it.
The force has been strong with PC gamers. But soon console owners will be able to pay more personal visits to that galaxy far, far away-now that LucasArts is working on several Star Wars games for the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation systems. Nintendo 64's graphics are so sharp that you can see for miles outside your speeder's canopy. Other levels are more Doom -like, with you wandering around Imperial bases and other Star Wars-inspired locales.
The game's graphics are expected to look like they're straight out of a Star Wars film, with all the grandiose scenery and technical details they need to look true to the trilogy. This movie feel will only be enhanced by the many Star Wars veterans who make guest appearances in Shadows of the Empire. Jabba the Hutt, Boba Fett. Darth Vader and even the Emperor himself appear in the game. Despite its big-time cast and complex story, Shadows of the Empire is only one part of a multimedia explosion that Lucasfilm has set off to promote the recently released Shadows of the Empire novel, which sits at the center of a nuiltimillion-dollar marketing blitz.
Other related merchandise includes comic books, action figures and even a soundtrack. Slated for a summer release, Rebel Assault 2 is a Star Wars full-motion-video tour-de-force that plunks the player behind the controls of several familiar spaceships, including the B-Wing,. This last ship lies at the center of Rebel Assaults 2's story, which revolves around an escalating arms race between the Empire and the Rebel Alliance.
Between flying sequences, players also engage in first- and third-person blaster battles. As in the first Rebel Assault, all of the sequel's sequences rely on full-motion video to draw the player into the Star Wars universe. Since Lucasfilm used original props and costumes from the trilogy, the scenes look especially authentic. Often described as "Doom on the Death Star," Dark Forces is a mixture of action and mystery that's set right before and after the events depicted in Star Wars.
The game opens with Katarn starting his newest rebel mission: to seek out and steal the plans for the Empire's planet-busting Death Star. Yes, these are the same plans that Argo carried around in his rusty innards in Star Wars. After you sneak through an Imperial base, kill a bunch of Stormtroopers and retrieve the plans, Dark Forces' stoiy jumps to the period just after Luke nukes the Death Star.
Now there's a new threat to the still-shaky Alliance, a menace that has wiped out an entire Rebel outpost and left few clues. Rebel spies have heard the name of the Empire's secret new weapons--the Dark Troopers--but the Alliance wants more information.
And you, as Katarn, spend the game's remaining 13 levels unraveling this mystery, eventually facing the Dark Troopers and their creator in combat. Just as in the other Star Wars games, players will see many familiar faces--and helmets--during their Dark Forces adventure.
Darth Vader and Rebel Alliance leader Mon Mothma star in the game's mostly rendered cinemas, which play before each level and add to Dark Forces' story. You'll also confront the trilogy's most famous bounty hunter, Boba Fett, stroll through Jabba the Hntt's palace, play seek and destroy in a Star Destroyer and visit other far-flung facilities.
Katarn can also collect numerous weapons-froin blasters to thermal detonators-that you'll recognize from the trilogy, and each depress of his weapon's trigger is rewarded with a straight-from-the-movie sound effect.
It echoes a simpler time when we could get ourselves lost in our own imaginations. With the recent release of Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace , kids today are lucky enough to have enough technology to get lost in the world of Star Wars George Lucas and his talented team at LucasArts.
And believe-you-me, after watching the movie I HAD to have this game. The premise is quite simple -- even simpler if you have already seen the movie. You have a podracer, you have a track, and you have to go around in a circle and hope to end up ahead of the pack. Imagine two huge like engines tethered to your sled pod , held together by a plasma-energy beam. Surprisingly, the design of these podracers "almost" makes sense.
LucasArts also does a great job representing the physics that would be involved while playing the game. You have these podracers and you race them against other podracers, um You have over 21 podracers to choose from. All of these are distinct in their styling, handling and drivers. You get to race on multiple tracks strung across eight distinct planets, each with its own theme and style of racing.
As you successfully finish each race, you will gain Trugats money that enable you to upgrade your podracer and prepare for the next race. Finish first and a new podracer is unveiled that you can use for future races. This is where the "storyline" in Racer starts to get iffy.
You never really get a sense of belonging to your pilot or podracer. Since you can choose from multiple pods and multiple pilots, it kind of lacks continuity. I would have liked to see the same pilot used and you be allowed to upgrade from there.
If you decided to try a different "character" from the movie, you could have chosen that pilot at the start of the career. How does it play? Simply put, if nothing else, Racer simulates speed better than any other game I have ever played. As you may have read in my other reviews, I am a big fan of force-feedback. If implemented correctly, this can entrance me into a state where my joystick becomes an extension of my persona Racer does this oh-so-well and has now become my "reference" title to which I compare all others.
I cannot believe how good Racer translates the physics and handling of the podracers through a simple joystick. The interface for preparing for a race, upgrading your podracer, and just about anything other than actually racing is confusing as all get out. At first, before reading the manual, I would just get mad and go on to the next race.
After reading the manual, it started to make sense You see, in some menus you need to use the mouse; in others, the keyboard; in others only the game controller seems to work. I ended up juggling so many peripherals around to upgrade my pod that I wound up ctrl-alt-elbowing my way into a frenzy. Coincidently, LucasArts posted a little blurb on their support site about this shortcoming.
Allow me to quote: "For navigating through the interface we recommend using the keyboard and mouse; joysticks, gamepads and wheels are not fully supported for the Front End interface. Unless your PC exceeds the power of your typical early issue, though, I would advise taking the trip on a home video system platform. Graphics: Excellent. If you have a high-end system, you'll be able to see reflections in water and smoke and dust billowing from the racers' engines. How to run this game on modern Windows PC?
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