Outlaw Racers

The Good
Randomly generated cities and routes, decent graphics (when it works), police and traffic cameras to work against, sort of persistent universe, multiplayer (not tested), customizable car decal, multiple cars

The Bad
Lots of graphical glitches, handling is a joke, AI is too unpredictable, lack of replay value after you get bored of racing, randomness may generate deadends

The Bottom Line
Outlaw Racers is hard to describe with one sentence. The closest would be Microsoft's Midtown Madness, albeit with much less detail, but randomly generated cities, where you race through various checkpoints to collect money and prestige.

You start with a basic car, and you can upgrade later by spending some of your hard-earned cash from the races. Engine, tire, car, and even paint and decal can be upgraded for a price.

Once you're satisfied with the car (or used up the money), it's off to the races. The city is randomly generated, with flags placed at various spots around the city. The traffic lights will change according to its own schedule, and you'll find other cars and police moving about the city on their own business.

As you race, you have to decide... Do I follow the traffic rules, thus not get any fines, and lose, or do I race all-out, break all traffic rules, and risk getting fined or caught by police? Or somewhere in between the two? If you run out of money to pay the fines, the race is over as your'e arrested and put in jail. You earn money by hitting certain checkpoints first.

The game then throws in a couple more complications... Police and traffic cameras, armored cars, cash trucks, construction zones, and the hyper-transport system.

Police will try to catch you and if they can stop you, you're fined for various traffic offenses you've committed so far, and that can be steep ($500 to $1500). Traffic cameras can often catch you speeding or running red light, which has its own fines. Those are deducted from your budget immediately. If you are out of money and was caught by the police, you go to jail and the race is over.

There are a few armored SUVs (gray in color) moving about the streets as well, and they love to crash the racers, if you let them. Fortunately they are usually too slow and you can avoid them easily.

One more way to earn money is to bump the various cash trucks running around the city. If you bump them right, you can receive a notable amount of money into your budget. However, someone may have gotten it before you. It also may not be worth it to chase it down while others may be getting the flags.

Occasionally, a road can be closed for construction. It is quite possible for you to drive into the zone... And fall into a ditch. You will get stuck and pay up to $1200 for a crane to pull you out. Half of the road can be closed, or the full road (both directions) may be closed. Construction is not shown on the map, so you may have to plan for an alternate route quickly.

Finally, some maps may include the hypertransport system, which is basically a special monorail for cars. Drive onto the platform when it is at the station, and for a small amount, you are quickly transported to the other HTS station, much faster than driving.

The races usually last only a few minutes, often less. So it's basically race, after race, after race, and so on. You don't get a flag to the nearest flag... You have to look at the map.

There really isn't much continuity between the races, other than your budget (earnings) and flags gathered being recorded on the "hall of fame". There was no "championship" or thing like that.

The multiplayer aspect was not tested.

The graphics were very glitchy. Polygons appear and disappear, textures flash, triangles drawn to horizon, horrible performance in software rendering, and so on. The only highlight was the ability to put your own hood decal/sign on the car.

The game quickly turned boring as you've seen all the city you wanted to see. There really is no strategy or tactics to the game. There is no point in NOT breaking the rules. The police are way too easy to outpace as they are NOT faster than you are, so as long as you don't crash you will avoid them. There is even a way to get through the construction zone without getting stuck and pay that $1200 "salvage" fee (though it doesn't always work). The other racers have no personality so you don't feel any "pressure" in racing against them. This, when added to the graphical glitches and such, makes the game boring after about 1 hour or so.

All in all, Outlaw Racers is a budget title that has a few interesting features, but could not make a cohesive game out of the whole thing.