Renegade Racers Review
Well, cartoony racers are all over the place, everywhere you look you get loads more coming out. Renegade Racers seems like the rest, full of cartoon animation (in 3D) with lots of spinning stars when you get hit, lovely graphics and weird and wacky characters to choose from. But this time you're in a hovercraft, so you get to race on water and on land.
Heres the Official story: "When Buck Billionaire issues a call to all renegades around the world to participate in his Renegade Racing adventure, he receives more responses than he can believe. It seems everyone considers themselves to be a renegade of some form or another. From tens of thousands of entries Buck selects twelve invitees from such diverse places as America, England, Jamaica, the Russian Federation, Transylvania, and India.
Each feels that they're a renegade from their chosen profession and/or lifestyle. And they each believe that winning the race is the solution to their renegade status, a way to bring themselves back in line with their homes, professions, or peoples."
The game is really easy to get to grips to, the One main Problem is the fact that it is very hard to actually play. Not in the control Sense, that easy as hell, just press X and go. Who uses break nowadays, not me!
The biggest problem is that once another player targets you with a rocket, be it the Computer or another Human it is very hard to not to get hit. You don't always have the chance to pick up a shield, which is really handy in this game, and the fact that you could not jump to try to avoid them was not fair at all.
The only way I found that you could avoid them was to turn sharply if you're going round a corner or to Break and Turn on the straight. This didn't really help your chances of finishing the race as all the track times seem to have been cut down to the last second possible and if you get hit too many time you don't have much of a chance.
The types of races in the game are slplit into a head to head competition vs another human or computer, a time race or a championship race. The races in the Championship mode are varied, they range from Simple racing over a number of laps to certain tasks like destroying a number of Beach Balls and Juming a certain distance over the number of laps you have to complete.
In the Multiplayer bit, which is split screen for 2 players, involves racing around the track to get first place. The winner in both Multiplay and SinglePlay gets to see a lovely rendered animation of their character doing the 'Victory Dance' according to the characters attributes.
The characters come in all flavours, you get a sorta 70's Rock Star with BIG Star shaped glasses, a Toffee Nosed Rich guy, who to be honest sounds really weird and other wacky characters you can use.
The weapons in the game, or should I say pickups range Missiles, which are Seeking and non-Seeking to Shields to protect yourself from other players missiles. You can also get speed ups, which if you pick up 2 make you go even faster and you also get mines which you need to remember where you put just in case all other players avoid them.
Moving away from the nasty events that you seem to get in the gameplay bit. The game control is really easy, there are only a few options in the menus to choose what type of game to play, you can play head to head, race against the time or do a championship race that involves a gruelling 30+ tracks to race against computer opponents who are to be honest really hard.
The control method is the easiest ever, use the X button to go faster and use R1 and R2 to release the weapon pickups you can pick-up.
As I mentioned before the graphics in the Game are all cartoony, from your driver and car to the level graphics and the icons on screen while you play.
The menu graphics look good and before you start the game you are shown a drive by of the level you're about to attempt and if it's the first time you play the game, you are also prompted to choose a character and type in your initials ready for the high score table.
The Ingame graphics are probably the best feature in the game, with different worlds, ranging from Fairground Fun to Snowy Lands and graphics to represent these different worlds. While your charcacter animation is nice, it does not provide much functionality, just to let you know what happens like when they get squashed they go flat or when pass another player they look back.
Sound in the game is very repetitive, every time you get hit, you only get about 2 responses and there is not much difference in the game speech except for the accent of the character and the few words they get to say. Besides those sounds the only other ones are on the menus and during any animations you get to see.
While the music in the game is nice, you don't really notice it during play as you spend a lot of time checking if you have been targeted, this is shown by a large target on the ass of your vehicle, warning you of impending doom and misery.
The game looks nice, the animations are well done while the graphics would not suit a mature gamer. The main problem is the fact that it is pretty hard to play and very hard to avoid enemy missiles. Not a game for Adults, it would amuse the kids though!