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It's Mutiplayer Online without Orcs
By Ely
It's fair to say that when I first read about this game I was grinning like the Cheshire cat! For me it sounded like finally my dreams were going to be realised and the freeform driving game I'd always wanted was only months away. So have Atari (something still not quite right about that!) pulled it off and delivered their vision and my dream. It pleases me immensely to say that yes they have.
The opening character selection screen is novel as you pick your in game persona from a bunch of passengers waiting in the departure lounge of an Airport, all of them bound for the island of Honolulu. Once selected the opening 'movie' to the game actually does a pretty good rendition of the title sequence of a Hollywood blockbuster and soon you've bought your first house and go off to get that all important first car purchased.
Now it's off out on the open road and blimey this is special, we're talking a fully mapped island for fuck sake, I mean seriously how cool is it to be able to drive around a place you know exists in real life. Sure the PGR series sort of does this but that's got silly barriers stopping you being able go anyway interesting, you can see the London Eye over the other side of the Thames but you can't get anywhere near it. Here though any road can be travelled on and it'll even let you go off road, although that leads to falling down a cliff or rolling into the sea!
Freedom of the Open Road
Obviously with so much tarmac available it'd be easy to get lost, fortunately you have a rather natty GPS system than can be called up at any time and allows you to see the whole island and set of a point to drive to, then you get the sexy female voice telling you to 'Turn Right at the next Junction', it's even clever enough to recalculate to route if you ignore her, something your other half would never let you get away with.
I drive 75miles to work and back every day which is pretty dull, yet the chance to jump in a Ferrari F430 and spend half an hour transversing the island to get to a new location is a real draw. Set the GPS, and off you go careering off down the road, over taking traffic, hammering down the freeways at 170mph, dodging police cars. Seriously it's very relaxing and being able to stick the in car entertainment to the Classic FM station and be able to belt along with the William Tell Overture booming away is genius.
Event Horizon
There's a ton of challenges to do which range from simple races, time trials, high speed test and deliveries and as you'd expect you get money for all this stuff and that allows you get better cars, bigger houses and oddly, clothes for your persona to wear!
Finally there's the other big draw, online play. Instant challenges of other players by flashing your lights and online races are just the start. You can form clubs with your mates that you can then use to race against other people's clubs.
There's a couple of niggles for me personally, no weather as such and no night time. I'd love the chance to bomb down a freeway at silly speed with a raging thunderstorm causing havoc in the middle of the night, but I'm a bit odd like that. Also why do you never see any of the non human driver characters in the top spec cars. Instead they've been left with SUVs and boring saloons for the most part, poor people!
So overall it's exactly what it says it is and nothing appears to have gone missing between concept and the finished product. If you love driving for the sake of driving then frankly this is the business.
October 2006
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