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Vigilante 8: Second Offense (Dreamcast) Five point scales suck. V8:20 isn't really a four. It's much more of a 3.5, maybe a 3.3, than a 4. But my deep abiding love for the original causes me to bump it up to the 4, despite the fact that they fucked up any number of things. Vigilante 8: Second Offense is the sequel to Vigilante 8, which is the console, dumbed-down version of the PC car-combat game Inserstate 76, which just got its own completely unrelated sequel, Interstate 82. Got it? Good. You drive around and you shoot things, and it's pretty. There's lots of weapons and special weapons and weapon combos, it (for the most part) controls well, it looks sharp, the frame rate is smooth, there's four-player split screen, yadda yadda. People don't read reviews for the good things. So where did they fuck up? First, physics and/or collision detection. Things drive through other things a lot. Cars through cars. Cars through buildings. Cars through floors. Cars through bridges. Cars through the ground. It's sloppy as hell. Also, much like the first one, cars can be sent flying in really unpredictable directions for obscure reasons. Second, you can get powerups that let you fly, or have better snow traction, or go over the water. Which is good. But trying to maneuver on the water is unintuitive and just plain sucky, and if you happen to overturn, you'll be stuck until you accidentally stumble across the button (Y) that sinks you and returns you to the land. Third, the one-player Quest mode, with it's inexplicable objectives and it's find-the-box gameplay that detract from the main purpose of the game, which is blowing the crap out of other cars. That said, when you do get to blow stuff up, it's tense, gripping action, especially in multiplayer. So it gets the four, even if it cranks me off to no end. |