MegaRace 2

The Good
Lance Boyle (aka. Christian Erickson) is back in the sequel to the first, great game. This was released three years on, and, just as the first game was groundbreaking and impressive, the second game is similarly impressive for its time. It is a sequel that has advanced the technology and gameplay of its predecessor, while retaining nearly everything that made Megarace great. The cars are now made up of 3D polygonal graphics, instead of the rendered sprites of the first game, and look wonderful. You also have much more control over your car and it feels a lot more like a real 'racer', even though the track is still pre-rendered.

The gameplay has been completely overhauled, but the decisions made work really well. The biggest change affects the whole focus of the game. In Megarace, the idea was to work your way through a series of gang members, destroying each car until you got to the leader. Destroy that car, and you win. In Megarace 2, it's a proper race, and you are properly competing against a whole bunch of other cars. You have to try and win. Destroying them is still possible, still useful and still actively encouraged, but is no longer compulsory. Being one of the first 3 to cross the finish line is what matters here. And, thus, the days of only ever seeing one other car on screen at a time are gone. Now you're bumping and knocking around with a racing pack. This is much more exciting.

Also, instead of just racing once round a track, you have to race three times on each track. You have to finish as one of the top 3 competitors in the first two rounds, then you have to win the third round. On each round, the number of competitors is whittled down. Eight cars on the first round. Seven on the second round. Just four cars left on the third round. This system works well. There are also championship tables and all the other stuff you need to make this a proper, competitive racing affair.

Lance Boyle's video clips, as ever, are one of the main attractions. This time they are hi-res, full motion (before, they were just him filmed against a blue screen, with a static rendered background added in later) and feature his new assistant. The clips are very funny and always act as a wonderful incentive to carry on playing (although the gameplay itself is good enough!), but I couldn't help feeling that things were just that bit funnier in the first game.

Other enhancements include the ability to go backwards on the tracks - Not really necessary, but just one more example of the much improved gameplay on offer here. As the tracks are pre-rendered and spool forwards, when you go backwards, you drive through a series of Alone In The Dark style static camera views. But this is fine, especially for a really unnecessary added value feature! If you really screw up a race, just lie in wait for other cars and then crash into them when they try to lap you! Ha ha ha! Another bonus feature allows you to record and play back any moments of glory. It's a bit hard hitting the key and doing this in the middle of a race, but it's a nice little feature to have around. The one clip I recorded showed me getting bored, turning around, getting hit by another car, then skidding off down the track with my car facing the wrong way before smacking into a barrier. Fun!

Graphics and music, as before, are excellent. Although the graphics are even better this time, of course! Oh yeah, and it runs at high speed on a 486!

The Bad
There's not much to dislike about this fine racing game. It was great to have ol' Lane Boyle hosting it again, but, like I said, I think he was just a little funnier in the first game, overall. This is still a laugh-fest, though.

Controlling your car can be difficult, at first. I started off the game and lost so badly that I thought I'd never be able to play it. It is also, as another reviewer stated, strangely difficult to keep the car going straight. But you'll soon get the hang of the controls. Lots of games (even lots of the best games) have these teething troubles, particularly when it comes to controlling the damn things.

For some reason, the game kept forgetting my key setup, so I had to reset it everytime I loaded the game. But with only a few keys required, this was no big deal. A minor bug.

Prizes are also a bit disappointing in this game. They're 'useful', whereas before they were completely useless, but very funny and kooky. Now you get stuff you can use, like missiles and mines...maybe even a new car, if you're extra lucky. Yawn! I would've actually preferred some more comedic stuff.

Hmm...Well...I can't think of anything else to complain about.

The Bottom Line
Megarace 2 takes a giant leap ahead of its predecessor. Megarace 1 was much better than nearly all of the 'on-rails' type games, but couldn't quite compete, in gameplay terms, with 'proper' races. Megarace 2 can compete happily with other 'racers', while retaining its own unique slant and style. A very good game, even if you didn't like Megarace (Oh yeah, Lance Boyle haters can even turn off his video antics in this game...Although I still you're crazy if you'd want to do that!) Megarace 3, where are you? (It's been delayed, I think.)

The Good
The thing I most like about it, is the crazy movies between the races. It has great actors and perfect animation in it. And the races are also superbe. The graphics is perfect, it has a beautiful environment. And it plays very fast, even on slow computers. I played this on a 486 and it was very smooth. The music and sound are also very awesome.

The Bad
There's is one complaint about this and that's the way you must take control of the car. They not driving like other racing-games. It is difficult to keep your car straight.

The Bottom Line
This is defently one of the best racing-games I ever have played. And I played many. If you prefer only to race, it is possible to turn the movies off. But that's for me the best part of it.

The Good
Just like the first MegaRace, the second installment is a champion in creativity, and in being so it still managed to surpass its predecessor. Nearly every single aspect has been beefed up and adapted to the combat racing canon.

In its heart it is still a racing/rail-shooting hybrid with a pre-rendered movie clip serving as the track itself, but with their full-screen high resolution rendering in lieu of the reduced viewport of the first MegaRace, the tracks got even more spectacular. So did the cars, which were perhaps the Achilles' heel of MegaRace's eye-candy: they are now full 3D models that scale fine depending on their distance and, what's more important, you are no longer limited to facing them one at a time, though this came at a terrible price that will be discussed later.

Back in the day, MegaRace got a lot of attention due to the charisma of the dystopian futuristic TV show setting à la The Running Man, and the antics of the annoyingly funny host Lance Boyle. Luckily, not a drop of this appeal was lost in this sequel, with Christian Erickson returning as an even more cynical Mr. Boyle, this time around sidekicked by a braindead bimbo assistant whose name he mixes up all the time. You'll just love/hate these cutscenes no less that you did MegaRace's, although useless prizes like the "genuine Scottish accent" are now gone.

With all this technological overhaul, the limitation to only six tracks in this second incarnation, as opposed to the fourteen - if memory serves me right - of its predecessor, doesn't even make itself felt so much. Many limitations in gameplay have been relaxed: besides the aforementioned need to cope with all opponents at the same time, it is now possible to drive the track backwards, in which case the movie is replaced by still camera angles. You are no longer obliged to shoot down all opponents in a row, since cars are now racing for positions. You race through every track in two five-lap sessions, where you will have to cross the finish line at least on a seventh and fourth place respectively. A third session lasts 3 laps only and has the four survivors racing without weapons, yet with the strict requirement of a first place this time around.

Finally, enter the monetary component in MegaRace 2. The power-ups scattered on the track that gave your car, or stripped it of, speed and ammunition are now gone. Missiles, mines, oil, repairs and shields can now be purchased before each race with the cash earned according to your earlier placement. So can other cars be purchased, although the difference appears to be merely aesthetic.

The Bad
Simply put, MegaRace 2 has some of the most blatantly obscene rubberbanding ever seen in a game. While catching up with an opponent or even overtaking it is always somewhat feasible, once you do you'll keep having it stuck on your tail. No matter how long you drive at top speed, you'll keep having everyone breathing on your neck until something happens and they overtake you. That "something" happening doesn't even have to be a mistake on your part. Sometimes it just happens out of the blue; sometimes it's enough for one car on your tail to slightly bump into yours and cause it to turn 180 degrees. Also you'll have a real hard time trying to figure how you can be overtaken by cars that keep swerving all the time from one side to another, and how they could possibly match your straight flat-out speed that way.

Yes, the car physics are totally unrealistic too. Touching a vehicle with just a corner of yours, or a slight collision with the roadside at half a degree too many can be enough to find yourself facing the wrong way. Given the generally low speed and the fact that all cars tend to stay close to one another due to rubberbanding, the overall feeling is comparable to a bumper car simulator. Laying mines to keep opponents off your tail and throwing a few missiles when they overtake you can help for a while, but is not enough for getting the job done until the last lap, and the fact that there are NO upgrades that affect speed, not even the stupidest nitro booster that even its predecessor had, certainly doesn't help. Add a shorter racing phase with guns switched off on top of that, and there you have it: the only remaining skill-dependent factor in the game is gone and the only expendable resource you're left with is hope.

Whether MegaRace 2 actually managed to surpass its predecessor in the sound department, is actually open to subjective judgement. The Jungle-ish soundtrack that accompanies each race is remarkable, but I've always been a fan of Stéphane Picq's style, even in the more chiptune-like form of the first MegaRace. Ingame sound effects, on the other hand, are nothing to write home about. A live commentary by Boyle is sorely missed, although it didn't turn up to be incredibly exciting when we finally got it in MegaRace MR3.

The Bottom Line
You can tell how hard MegaRace 2 tries to shake off the stigma of full-motion video shooters, all the while maintaining and even improving upon the spectacularity of pre-rendered tracks. Everything moves towards making MegaRace into a full-fledged combat racer, a trend confirmed by the third and final game. However, it does so from a questionable perspective: rather than adding FMV eye-candy on top of a solid racing game engine, it feels more like it's struggling to add racing game components to a rail shooter. While the effort is appreciated, Cryo got the very fundamentals of the genre wrong, starting with speed management. The generally low pace, combined with unrealistic physics and a tendency to squeeze most cars in a restricted segment of the track, disempowers the player and makes the application of their skills marginal compared to mere chance.

Suitable for cheesy FMV freaks, trigger-happy drivers and fans of The Running Man and Death Race 2000, and I happen to be all of these. Everybody else should go for a title with a real 3D engine and stay clear of this stress test - any Carmageddon or Twisted Metal will do.