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Playstation > PlayStation Game Cheats > PlayStation Reviews > Staff Review | |
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| Setting
the Scene: Picture yourself being able to participate in the ultimate demolition derby where the winner is not only the last vehicle running on the course, but often times the last vehicle…period! Not being content with just being able to ram other cars into submission, Vigilante 8: 2nd Offense allows players to adorn their vehicles with an ungodly arsenal of weapons designed to put an end to your opponents motoring skills forever. Set in a fantasy land where just about anything goes, gamers get to cruise around in '70's style auto's, rip up the landscape and blow other cars to smithereens. Ah, it just don't get any better than that…or does it? Sound and Vision: The soundtrack is pretty much what you would expect from a game of this type. It's rough, blaring, gritty, in your face and it gets your adrenaline pumping. The sound effects are equally brutal. When the majority of the game consists of blowing stuff up, you had better have some good sounds for explosions and V8: 2nd Offense certainly has its share. V8 delivers some good crunching metal on metal sound effects, a nice variety of weapon sounds and all of the prerequisite environmental noises as well.  The
graphics are a rather mixed bag. The car models are nicely detailed,
clean and crisp. There is some minimal specular lighting on the metal
and reflections off the glass. The tires move when you steer and
you can see a bit of suspension at work when you bottom out. The
environments for the most part are lively and moderately detailed with
buildings, water, hills, roads and other fillers like trees and such.
The backgrounds are also pretty crisp in most levels, particularly snowy
areas that really show off nice graphical effects such as lens flaring
and snow powder. Good stuff.  The
frame rate appears to be pretty high and stays that way throughout the
destruction and chaos. The bad part is that there is an incredible
amount of polygon seaming, and pop-up present as you play through the
game. So much so that I often found it distracted me from my objectives.
When things got particularly hairy in a heated battle, I would often
find myself losing my bearings because there was so much polygon dropout
happening all around me. I guess this is just the price we must pay for
having such a dynamic 3D environment to travel in…the poor old
Playstation just can't keep up! Playability: I guess it's some kind of unwritten law, all relatively successful titles absolutely must have a sequel. Activision's Vigilante 8 game last year was indeed a smashing success (pun intended) and it was natural to expect a part two. So following up on their surprise hit last year Activision has brought out Vigilante 8: 2nd Offense. Sticking to the same basic Twisted Metal premise of crush, kill and destroy everything in your sights, V8: 2nd Offense ups the ante over its predecessor with some new cars, a ton of super special combo moves per vehicle and a more detailed Quest Mode for single players to enjoy. 
Before I go on though, lets face facts for a moment…V8
and its successor, 2nd Offense is more or less a blatant rip off of the
Twisted Metal series. But what the hell, Twisted Metal hasn't been
Twisted Metal since the second game in the series so we obviously need
someone to carry the torch that 989 almost let fizzle out. Okay, so the V8 series copies the general premise of Twisted Metal…you drive around in souped up cars with an arsenal that would be capable of winning a war in a small 3rd world nation. The object is your basic king of the hill syndrome…be the baddest son-of-a-bastard out there and also be the last car still motoring.  The
environments are all wide open enabling gamers to go anywhere they
choose…that is until you slam into an invisible wall and must turn
around. Not to worry though, the areas are generally HUGE and there is
little doubt that you will find yourself restricted in any way. They
are also quite creatively designed and feature a slew of interactivity.
There are ski lifts that you can traverse, buildings that you can jump
over or onto and all kinds of secret stuff to discover along the way. There are of course all sorts of weapons of mass destruction to be picked up including mines, missiles, rocket launchers, laser guns, you name it…it's almost like a store named "Hi Tech Weapons R-Us" puked stuff all over the landscape. There are also other items that you can pick up that are more specific to the type of terrain that you are playing on. For instance, in a snow covered level you will be able to find special snow treads that will enable your car to handle much better in the powder. On another level you will find little outboard motors that allow your vehicle to glide across water. Like I said, this is a true go anywhere environment. In between gameplay levels handy little hints are flashed on the screen. They can range from providing information on weapon, to the proper button sequence for pulling off some nasty little combo attack. Two of the combo's that come immediately to mind are the multiple guided missile attack that sends out a barrage of rockets at your opponent and the other if the hovering mines. This move takes ordinary mines and causes them to float about to eventually zero in on some unsuspecting victim. I have always been frustrated with the control aspect of these types of games though. By "these types" I mean the Twisted Metal, V8 and Rouge Trips of the world. I hate the default setting that enables the d-pad to act like the gas/break/reverse/steering unit all rolled into one. Much better to use the analog pad to motor around with and save the d-pad for the tighter left/right maneuvers. Even with the analog sticks though, I still have trouble with anything that even closely resemble proper control of my car. I always tend to overshoot my enemies or miss ramps and power-ups completely. I find I have to keep turning around and trying again…and again.  There
is certainly a lot of good that can be said for a game that lets you
take part in the ultimate demolition derby and just get your aggressions
out by really nuking everything in sight. It's a pretty straightforward
concept of kill or be killed that is pushed up a few notches by the
inclusion of a fine bevy of weapons and the ability for weaker riders to
pull of some truly devastating moves by using a particularly nasty
combo. The vehicles are very cool and range from a hovering gold
Palomino to a "take no garbage" junk truck. The Quest Mode
kicks ass and can be played with one or two players!
There is also a nice two-player co-op mode where
you can selects the types of enemies you want to battle against and how
many of them you want to try and destroy with a friend. If it
wasn't for the graphical glitches that I mentioned earlier and the piss
poor control factor, this game would have been a top scoring title. As
it stands though, it is probably the best Twisted Metal style game in
existence right now. Game Options: This is a 1 disk game for 1 or 2 Players. It is compatible with the standard (digital) joypad and the analog stick controls of the dual shock joypad. Games can be saved via memory card (1 block per save). |
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