POD

The Good
First of all I should mention I absolutely love this game and spent a lot of time playing it, especially with friends.

Why's that?

First of all, the game has an actual, quite complex and detailed, background story. You don't only see that in the excellent, pre-rendered introduction to the game, but also in the (bonded!) manual, which has several reports and background stories printed. This fact makes the racing game already unique.

The gameplay itself is absolutely arcade orientated. It's possible to adjust the settings for each car, though that is not a complex procedure like in other (more realistic) racing games. Before starting the race you can create a "playlist" of tracks you want to play in this race, let the game select random levels for you or just play all tracks, where also the story comes to it's end.

The game features an fish-eye like perspective which makes the gameplay look fast - and in fact it also is. Good reflexes are essential for the game, especially on higher difficulty levels. The levels are very different from each other and fit the setting of the game perfectly. While driving errors are not always critical, the main reason for me to avoid them is because of the perfect "flow" when avoiding them. This is also true for the abbreviations where you have to choose whether to take the risk to take them, or live with the often drastic consequences when you failed them.

The game features only one single (12 minutes long) soundtrack, but it also fits the atmosphere perfectly and surprisingly isn't annoying even after a long time of playing.

One of the other outstanding features of the game aside from the playability is the multiplayer ability. The game doesn't only feature numerous techniques like Splitscreen, TCP/IP, IPX/SPX or serial cable, it's even possible to combine them! We used that to play with four persons on two computers against each other in teams.

It should be also mentioned that the game had very good graphics for it's time. Especially the Glide version had great effects like lens flares, which were not often seen before.

The Bad
The game had several technical issues. This started with the fact that there existed dozens of (and for it's time gigantic) patches, which in term had issues to correctly apply. Ingame the problems continued with stuttering sound and huge lags also with fast network connections.

And worst of all: The game isn't playable on modern systems any more.

The Bottom Line
The game probably isn't for everyone (as seen at the other ratings). I'm an adventure and role playing fan myself, but this game absolutely won my heart despite it's several technical annoyances. As a fan of realistic simulations you will likely forgo the game. But if you like a good presentation and arcade games with a good flow, you should at least try this game (if you have an old enough system).