Death Rally

The Good
First off, I'm surprised! I've never been a real fan of European game design, but the Finnish development house Remedy turned me completely around! Death Rally shows what can be done with a game when you really think about it!

First off, the game itself has a very nice, old school-ish feel, sort of like a violent Micro Machines or a Rock 'n' Roll Racing, both of which sucked up a lot of my time in my youth. The game plays from an overhead view, but it feels right for this game. The gameplay is very wonderfully conceived here; your opponents almost seem to have minds of their own, and actually DO fight with you to cross the finish line! They also try grabbing Power-Ups as they appear, and will even kill each other if need be! Talk about brutal competition!

The game starts you with a little clunker car called the Vagabond, which looks like an old VW Beetle. During the game, you can earn money in the races by finishing in at least 3rd place, or by killing all your opponents on the track, or in some other such "friendly" method (like earning money by making spectators happy). You can put that money towards purchasing upgrades for your car, or saving up a bundle and buying yourself a new car (such as the Porsche-like Wraith, or my favorite, the Deliverator). You can also take out a loan from the Loanshark, but you'd better pay it back within three races, or he'll take it out of your hide (in other words, he could possibly kill you if you don't have his money). There are plenty of other little touches as well, such as heh heh the Undergroud Shop, where you can buy weapons for your car, or even sabotage the car of the highest ranking racer in your next race. sadistic grin

Now, onto the cosmetics...while I normally don't like all this "rendered" stuff in a lot of my games, Death Rally's rendered graphics definitely make the style, and are very clean and cool looking. Everything is nice and sharp and the movement of the cars is pretty nice looking. The "mushroom" effect (where you grab a mushroom on the track and the screen begins to waver like mad) is cool, if not a little too disorienting. Still, I can't complain...it does look very damn cool to see that.

Sounds and music are both very good indeed. The music is mostly techno and is an excellent compliment to the game, fitting alongside the action very well. The sounds are pretty good, with plenty of engine sounds, gunfire, explosions, and the cool scraping, grinding noise a wrecked car makes as it slams into the sidelines. Nothing to complain about at all here!

The Bad
Not very much, except for one thing: Why waste all the space on the CD for a protection file when you can just record the music to the CD instead? Apogee just doesn't seem to get the idea that if you're going to distribute your game on a CD in the first place, why not USE that room to enhance the game a little bit? Remedy should've let them know about that.

Another thing that should've been worked on was character customization: all you can enter is a picture, a car color, and a name and that's it. Remedy should've allowed you to customize you characters a bit more.

The Bottom Line
Death Rally is an excellent game by any standards, and (thankfully) Apogee still sells it direct. Call them up ASAP, get your credit card out, and order this game! Definitely two thumbs up, and kudos to Remedy for a wonderful racer!

The Good
Gameplay is very good. Graphics are good which is probably due to the fact that the programmers are all part of Finnish demo groups. The mushroom effect looks still good.

The Bad
The game is maybe a little bit too simple and short.

The Bottom Line
Drive and win or kill and win or be shot and lose. The game continues in the Finnish traditional way of making games.

Slicks 'N' Slide is very much like this game.

The Good
Almost everything.. it is addictive, fast, fun, furious, and some other things that begin with an ef.. the musics are good too, and seeing that they come from a Future Crew member, they must too. :) The pseudo-3d view is also nice (Although they didn't use cool demo group tricks very much.. sad).

The Bad
It sometimes gets repetitive and the arsenal of weapons is pathetically small..
C'mon, the name is Death Rally for dog's sake!

The Bottom Line
A real blast to play racing game.

The Good
I like the way one can shoot at the other cars. A great racing game, one of the top 10 games I have played.

The Bad
At the start, it take a while to build up money to buy a good car. More tracks are also needed; there are only 4 tracks available.

The Bottom Line
Racing cars game it was meant to be. Great fun. Good Multi-player fun.

The Good
Great graphics and gameplay. Death Rally also adds exelent upgrade-able features. The AI racers are extremly realistic and the game will never play the same twice.

The Bad
The game is extremely violent (which is open to interpertation). I feel the game is perfect as is, but may be innapporiate for younger audiences.

The Bottom Line
Death Rally is a top down racing game simmilar to Rock 'n Roll Racing for the Super Nintendo. You are part of an underground racing leauge and do anything to win, and do even more illegal things to get a few exta bucks from a sponser. Once you have all that $$ you can spend it to upgrade that heap of trash you start out with to a super sleak racing machine and climb the ladder to top ranked racer in all of Death Rally.

The Good
The graphics were nothing compared to our time, but is excellent compared to it's time. The way the head lights affect textures and lighting on walls was amazing, and the cars shining in sun was also an eye catcher. The cars look very good.

Buying cars is fun, as you truly do have a sense of achievement as you get better and better cars. Each car is different from the first, and they all (excluding the first car) look great. Blasting the other cars with 2 guns is a truly great feeling (once you get to 4th car, your car gets 2 guns)

The Bad
You will find that if you are a good gamer, you can finish the game in about an hour. It's not very hard to earn money as for some reason you are always faster than other of the SAME CAR, and you can find cheap ways to get ahead of them (clinging to edges of a turn). I beat a race which had 2 Shriekers (4th car) and 1 sentinel (3rd car) while I was a vagabond (1ST CAR!!), by doing the turn clinging thing.

The Bottom Line
Pretty good game, but should have been extended a little.

<My Rating> ( 4 / 5 )

The Good
-The easy gameplay. Just head out on the track and have some fun. -I loved the black market option where you can buy various upgrades that aren't available in the standard market. Like the turbobooster, spikes to ram your opponent with, mines and off course the sabotage. - The music is also great. Most games from that time used MIDI's. This game uses MOD's. - I also loved all the offers from various underground crooks. They can ask you to pick up some narcotics along the way and finish first before everyone would know about it, or they can ask you to disable a specific driver. All these little opportunities pay off even better then finishing first.

The Bad
Well the shareware version was harder than the full version. That's because you can't buy everything from the black market at once in the shareware version. In the full version you could buy everything from the blackmarket.

The Bottom Line
This is a fun little game that is extremely addictive, because you'll have to make a name for yourself. It's easy gameplay makes it even more addictive. It's hard to win, but it's easy to play.

You won't be disappointed.

The Good
It included high speed action, a very fast frame rate, incredible music and graphics, and an evil edge! The courses are well designed. The 3D overhead graphics will suck you in. It runs perfectly on my Pentium 75. The tracked mod music is great; I especially like the funky horn driven piece for the two "raceway like" tracks. Get the mines and a spiked bumper from the underground market when you can: they will aid in your destruction of the cars! Kill all of the cars for an added bonus from the Grim Reaper himself! Race Duke Nukem! Even Tommy Chong makes a guest appearance!

The Bad
Um, after thinking for 5 minutes, I still can't come up with anything...

The Bottom Line
The best and most fun way to play this game is to have a "kill all of the other cars" strategy.

The Good
OK, so it's not 3D, but it's still much more fun than any racer I've played. The music is simply mind-boggling (Purple Motion, we love you!), the graphics and interface are extremely well made. The controls simply rock and the gameplay is awesome.

The Bad
It can get a bit boring at times.

The Bottom Line
Get it. Play it. Love it.

The Good
Its wonderful top-down smooth gameplay. Graphics and music. Easy to get used to.

The Bad
The Shareware version gives us almost all the action that the full game can promise. In the full game when you improve your car to the highest levels you are unable to feel the competitive tries of other racers: All the races become an easy task.

The Bottom Line
Very addictive and enjoyable racing experience in which you are looking your car from the skies! A must have for every racers...