Beetle Buggin'

The Good
It's really fun to play but it can get boring after a while since the game is not a very hard to master racing game. You might have troubles in the beginning but after a while all modes become somewhat easy and mostly it's possible to win with a lower class than your opponents. The "Jump" races aren't as hard as it seems, it needs just full acceleration and a proper timing to release the nitro-booster. Since the "Monster" tracks are quite hard to master the game is still fun to play after many years. If you like Surf and Tex-Mex music (who said that it's Country?) this game offers some for you, I like it much and listen to them sometimes.

The Bad
The graphics look meager for today but racing games generally use sparse polygon models to keep an acceptable frame-rate for lower specced machines. The wheels are octagons covered with a quad using alpha blending to create a quasi circle (likewise for pre '98 racing games), the fender and the windows are "cutouts" made with a transparent overlay which leaves an ugly aliasing (an often used trick to save polygons), the cars have minimal interior and the driver is a "near to paper-cutout". The LOD is meager and overall the graphics are less good as i.e. for NFS3 and the post-processing can't cover all. The game is in my opinion a bit too easy except for the "Monster" competitions. The physics are typically unrealistic but simulation isn't the goal of this game.

The Bottom Line
Easy to mediocre to play racing game which offers fun for some weeks. It's by far no racing sim, rather a fun racing game. It suits well for beginners in this genre. The game is easy to control even with a digital game-pad (experienced players can easily use the keyboard). Sure it can't match to today's standards (it didn't even match the past standards) but it's fun to play and I played it back then on a 500MHz processor with a 64MB GFX card. Guess that if you played it on a CRT monitor it will cover many of the graphical leaks which are extremely visible in today's high resolutions and wide screens.

The Good
It's just plain fun. Nothing's as fun as driving a flower beetle, with nitro boosters and up a ramp with some great 60's tunes playing in the background. Coupled with great graphics, this game makes one hell of a driving game. Best of all, low-end computers can run the game with mediocre graphics on an acceptable framerate. And the different gameplay modes are pretty original in my opinion. They really hit the nail with the Jump and Monster modes.

The Bad
Of course it's not flawless. The graphics aren't perfect, but that's made up for some people with the low system requirements. The AI isn't that realistic, but you can complain about that in every game. Basically, the top computer players drive flawlessly and the worst drivers keep crashing into you all the time. And, despite the great music, there just isn't enough of it. They only have two tracks for each mode.

The Bottom Line
It's a great game. If you like driving games like Big Red Racing then you'll definately like this one. It's got the same wacky, out-of-control racing, plus a great soundtrack.