26 May 2000 -- digital photos, programming, audio, video, e-commerce, genetic loto, cgi, tutorials, exempt reviews, innovation, knowledge economy, virtual racing

26 May 2000 - previous May updates: 01 03 05 07 11 13 16 19 21 23 26 ; ; previous updates

1 - Rollcage Stage II (review) ; 2 - More Gaming Coverage

Rollcage Stage II on review... on your right.

Flashy! Cool! But is it any fun?!

Yep! It is fun. It is fast, and it is explosive, but kind of average too.

Speed boost can blast you to over 500 mph, with a red tail.

These electric appendices are for your protection. Really.

Sometimes you won't be able to understand what's going on!

Rollcage Stage II (review)

Racing games are on a turning point. The most important recent attempts on the genre are GP Legends (that sets incomparable realism), the Need for Speed series (that blends arcade and simulation, like no other), F1 2000 (that can't REALLY be reviewed right now, because no PC can handle its demands, if you want great frame rates), Rally Masters + Rally Championship + Collin McRae Rally (as the finest and only examples on rallying), ... and Rollcage Stage II, as the representative of post-modern aesthetics.

Rollcage Stage II [RS2] is an average racing game, that it is worth a look, just because it is the only serious attempt on futuristic car racing, although such an option can also be seen as an excuse for not being able to handle nowadays vehicles. Motorhead is far better, but the cars and the tracks can't be said to be that futuristic.

RS2 is a graphical exhibition of Glide flares, Glide speed, neons, explosions, electric music and everything else kind of flashy, starting at its own menu interface... Glide is a 3DFX API, but the game will run on D3D, though less flashy.

(So) RS2 looks good, but nothing like reference works; just very professional. For one thing it has to be praised: the force feedback is damn adequate, and steering wheels are well supported, which - of course - should be something so common, that it shouldn't deserve a single comment... However, real life is different, and there are so many crap titles selling with terrible wheel support, that this must written. For example, I tried Demolition Racer the other day, and I almost vomited my guts! I can't believe that it is the work of some of the people behind the original Destruction Derby titles, that did so well on the Playstation (and on the PC!).

Back to RS2, after a few hours, you'll have voided all the novelties. That is the problem. What does RS2 have to offer? Not much, really. It has plenty of cars, plenty of tracks, but these quantities can't hide the fact that the single player mode will be exhausted fast, by experienced players. And why is this a problem? Remember games like the superb Ecstatica (that set a new standard for horror interactivity)? Ecstatica could be played in little more than 1 hour, once you've learned all the "tricks"... still, it remains recommended!

RS2 is short and while it lasts, it does NOT kick you to the moon. Races are simple matters of going around closed circuits, with lap times that will rarely exceed the 60 seconds, as you would expect, when driving cars capable of over 500 mph... This means that each circuit will feel very repetitive if run too many times, and feel too short, if run the default number of laps. Dead end.

Cars have weapons, but there is a gaming mode, that lets you disable them. Unfortunately, weapons are stupid - missiles, conventional guns, electricity traps and speed boosts are simply NOT EFFECTIVE. Better not to activate them (you can catch 2, then you must fire-primary of fire-secondary to use them)... For example, if you activate a speed boost, on most tracks, that will translate to accidents - on twisty circuits, controlling your 300 mph average speed car is already an Inferno, now imagine doing it at twice the pace... cough cough...

Firing guns will also bring a strong response from your adversaries, and it is much easier to win a race, just by going full throttle, eyes wide open, and not caring about the other cars. A not very positive note on car design (car design is not just the car's graphics...) is that it always compensates to drive the faster acceleration vehicles, instead of the higher top speed ones... this is so, because the chance for you to spin once and / or collide with the scenario is very high...

The most obvious flaw in RS2 is the (relative lack of) sense of speed. Most of the time, you'll be speeding at over 400 mph, and yet you will perceive the world / the track just like in most regular racing games... or slower... Of course that tracks for 400 mph speeds, are on a different scale, but what gamers want is absolute sensations, not relative experiences, that end up measuring less than what it feels to run a webcam on the back of your cat :)

I had fun with RS2, but not GREAT fun. Average fun, as I first wrote. It will amuse you for some hours, maybe some days, but only until you lay your hands on better alternatives...

High marks for the graphical design. High marks for the overall quality - the game shows plenty of programming expertise! Lower marks for the playability.

Maybe the best bits are on the multiplayer experience!, but that highly depends on your human adversaries.

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