Fantastic romp through PS1 era square ass cities. Enjoyed this a lot more than I expected to.
This game serves as a nice contrast to other driving games of this era that focused more on track racing such as Gran Turismo and Ridge Racer which was a bigger genre back then. The open-ended levels give a nice degree of freedom to your maneuvers around the streets.
Speaking of maneuvers, the driving in this game is so satisfying. It's arcade-y enough to keep it fun but with enough realism to push you to improve your skills and take better corners, apply brakes efficiently, dodge traffic, etc.
The most prominent pain points in this game relate to mission design: Some missions in the second half are dreadful. I'm talking boring AND hard. I don't know if they just gave up with their missions or what, but just making you drive all the way across the maps is not engaging at all, on top of the fact that longer missions are just simply more annoying since your "Felony" meter (or Wanted meter) keeps building up making cops more aggressive. The cop spawning system guarantees that you will bump into cops at some point, and you can't avoid it, unless you want to cut it really close with your timer. The infamous final mission is the best example of this. You need to get from one end of the map to the other on max felony pretty much the entire time. I don't think I would have completed it without save states. I don't even feel bad about it.
Still, I loved this game despite the bad spots. Apparently, a lot of people drop this game in the tutorial that's inside the car park. I thought it was really fun, but I guess it’s a nice barometer for your enjoyment of the game. It shows you what you can do in this game with your car, and you may or may not find it cool enough to stick it out. I know I did.
This game serves as a nice contrast to other driving games of this era that focused more on track racing such as Gran Turismo and Ridge Racer which was a bigger genre back then. The open-ended levels give a nice degree of freedom to your maneuvers around the streets.
Speaking of maneuvers, the driving in this game is so satisfying. It's arcade-y enough to keep it fun but with enough realism to push you to improve your skills and take better corners, apply brakes efficiently, dodge traffic, etc.
The most prominent pain points in this game relate to mission design: Some missions in the second half are dreadful. I'm talking boring AND hard. I don't know if they just gave up with their missions or what, but just making you drive all the way across the maps is not engaging at all, on top of the fact that longer missions are just simply more annoying since your "Felony" meter (or Wanted meter) keeps building up making cops more aggressive. The cop spawning system guarantees that you will bump into cops at some point, and you can't avoid it, unless you want to cut it really close with your timer. The infamous final mission is the best example of this. You need to get from one end of the map to the other on max felony pretty much the entire time. I don't think I would have completed it without save states. I don't even feel bad about it.
Still, I loved this game despite the bad spots. Apparently, a lot of people drop this game in the tutorial that's inside the car park. I thought it was really fun, but I guess it’s a nice barometer for your enjoyment of the game. It shows you what you can do in this game with your car, and you may or may not find it cool enough to stick it out. I know I did.