I love this game, which is why it pains me so much to give
it an overall score much lower than what I wish I could
award it, based on the fun-filled hours I spent with it
over the weekend (thank God for rentals!). A spiritual
sequel to the 1980's arcade game "Chase H.Q.", "RayTracers"
gives you the command of a powerful vehicle (which you
choose out of four) and five/six tracks on which you have
to race against a ticking clock and an array of obstacles
(barrels, police cars, trucks) and level-end bosses. Your
vehicle carries no weapons, just the deadly combination of
speed (the game is fast!) and a powerful bumper capable of
ramming the most powerful machinery off the road and into a
heaping pile of twisted metal. Anyone with an IQ in the
double-digits should be able to pick-up and instantly jump
into the fun, except for professor Stephen B. Hawkins (but
that's not really the guy's fault! :-O). Is it worth the
dough stores are asking for it ($29 to $39 brand-new), or
are you better off renting this puppy from your nearest
rental store?
GAMEPLAY / FUN FACTOR: B
Forget about "Gran Turismo" realism, this game is 100% pure
arcade racing (it wouldn't surprise me if it was released
in Japan as an arcade title), and its ultra-simplistic
goals and execution are designed to appeal to the broadest
possible audience (think "Independence Day", the movie).
You select one of four vehicles, which range in both
Speed/Acceleration and Steer/Attack depending on the combo
of machine and driver: Lang drives a pretty red Spanker
(he's the all-around average driver/car), Blody gets the
Green Buffalo (he's strong), Asuka has a yellow Lynx (she's
fast but weak) and Sleoteel drives a blue Hawk (with power
and speed but lacking in control). You can go to a Time
Attack Mode where you can race any of four tracks: Circuit,
Freeway, Mountain and Kaiser's Road; these four are also
the tracks you will drive when using the Chase Mode, which
is the heart of the game and the closest thing to a sequel
of the popular Taito driving/action game of the 1980's,
"Chase H.Q." the PSX has ever seen (Taito is also the
developer of "RayTracers", released in the US under THQ).
In this mode you race against the obstacles on the road,
trying to either avoid them to prevent slowing your race,
or ram against them and destroy them for bonus points;
cones, barriers and other vehicles are all over these
tracks, and some of the other vehicles even have some
patterns that the discriminating player will use toward his
advantage. For example, most CPU vehicles will take two or
three solid hits to explode, but only one if you catch them
from behind when they suddenly brake because that CPU drone
has reached it's alloted racing space (weird AI strategy, I
know, but what do you expect from an arcade-type racer?).
At the end of each track you will race a giant vehicle, and
try to both (a) keep up with it as it turns and maneuvers
so you can keep them within ramming distance, and (b) avoid
its enemy fire, which seeks to slow you down and eat the
precious few seconds that by now should be left in your
timer. Fail to destroy the boss (you didn't empty the
energy bar on top of the screen), and you have a chance to
replay that track (unlimited continues here) but not to
re-start the circuit from the very beginning. If you
defeat the first four tracks, you will go into a fifth
track (which looks suspiciously like a night-time version
of Kaiser's Road) and go up against some of the earlier
bosses, as well as an additional boss that is more sneaky
and hard to ram than the others. There is also a sixth
track in the game, but I may be spoiling too many of the
surprises in the game already (and that is bad because, to
the best of my knowledge, there are no cheats or secrets in
this PSX game... what the hell??!!).
If any of the above makes this game sound like a cakewalk,
well, it is! Even at Hard, the game is easily conquerable
with a cautious use of the Turbo button and the careful
memorization of the tracks, which have plenty of turns and
twists to keep the gamer constantly tapping the control pad
left and right (analog control, sadly, isn't supported).
Even the characters that have a lower rating in Steering
can be easily manipulated by the tight control, which just
adds to the shallowness of the game. But shallow can be
fun, and if you consider this game as an acceptable
substitute for the arcade thrills the PSX version of "San
Francisco Rush" failed to deliver, then "RayTracers" comes
highly recommended. Those looking for a realistic or more
arcade-perfected driving experience should check "Gran
Turismo" or your local arcade for the latest Sega driving
games; Namco's "Rage Racer" looks like an RPG compared to
the stripped-to-its-bare-bones gaming experience of this
Taito racer.
GRAPHICS / VISUALS: B+
Taito has managed to emulate the artificial look and color
scheme of Namco's "Ridge Racer Revolution", mixed it up
with an engine that borrows the "feel" of "Test Drive 4",
and then cranked up the speed to a higher level with a
frame-rate that is somewhere between 30 and 45
per-second... with not a hint of major slowdown anywhere!
Even the window on the back of your car reflects the exact
surroundings you are racing through ("Daytona CCE" for
Saturn and "San Francisco Rush" on N64 faked that effect),
and the light-sourcing and explosions look solid but
somewhat blocky and squarish. If this game had come out
only a year before it would have turned around some heads.
But with the God-like graphics of "Gran Turismo", "Crime
Killers" and "Wipeout XL" around it, "RayTracers" loses
some of its luster and ends up looking like another good
PSX racer, and unfortunately there are too many of those
already. Unlike the "Ridge/Rage Racer" series though, this
game has several different-looking tracks rather than one
long track with different paths.
A word about the bosses. They look fine and move around
the track with relative ease (why would a plane and/or a
helicopter fly low-enough to be rammed by a vehicle??!!),
but they lack any menacing features or special detail that
makes the defeat of a boss memorable. Fans of Namco's
"CyberSled" will want to check the Tanks at the end of the
first track in "RayTracers" for a nice little flashback,
and those of you who actally bought that stupid
"Construction Video Machines" a while back will want to see
the menacing Excavator that leaves sparks all over the road
you must drive through. Unfortunately once you defeat the
boss the game doesn't show you the ensuing explosion and
vehicular carnage, it just fades to white (lame!). The FMV
cinematics are well-rendered, but how many times can yo see
a hue-colored vehicle drive through a renderd city until it
becomes boring beyond belief? Check out the endings though
for a laugh or two.
MUSIC / SOUND EFFECTS: C+
Here is where Taito truly dropped the ball, and let
"RayTracers" reduce itself into an average driving game.
There is no music during the race, which means you're stuck
with the annoying engine sound, and the standard
tire-screeches, objects-breaking-left-and-right, and
metal-scrapping sound effects we've all heard before in a
dozen other similar games (to their credit, these effects
were professionally done and sound fine). The music during
menu screens and FMV cinematics is dead-average, and is not
memorable at all; there is a cheesy announcer popping every
once in a while, but not during the actual race. What
we're left with then is a game that plays like "Chase H.Q."
but lacks any of that game's quirky personality (remember
the cops yelling "Yahoo!" when the Turbo boost was
activated, or saying "You're under arrest!" when the bad
guy's car gave way?), since we never get to see or HEAR any
of the car's drivers say anything, or comment on the
ongoing action. A shame, since a few lines could have
added a much-needed infusion of personality to a racer that
is sorely lacking any... oh well, at least is brain-dead
fun for the all ages.
OVERALL: B-
Such potential for greatness, such good graphics (for a
non-Namco, non-SCEA, non-Psygnosis racing game), and such a
nice concept (a 32-bit revival of "Chase H.Q."). All
wasted on a game that is loads of fun for the 15-30 minutes
that it will take you to finish, if you practice
long-enough to memorize the tracks and get acquainted with
the controls; this is the PSX equivalent of the fun but
equally-shallow Saturn game "Die Hard Arcade", which was
also a fun game that could be defeated in less time than it
takes to watch an episode of "South Park" without
commercials. Rent it for a weekend of fun bumper-bashing,
and pray that they don't drop the asking price of
"RayTracers" to less than $20, because then I won't be able
to keep this sucker away from my library. People looking
for an easy-to-get-into racer that do not crave deep or
rewarding gameplay take notice... the anti-"Gran Turismo"
is out there, waiting for your wallet at a discount shelf
near you.
