A Free Ride On The Death Track

You may recall that Jim talked positively about Russian shooty-racer Death Track: Resurrection a little while ago - but then Jim says a lot of things, like how Belgians are trying to steal his eyebrows and that his favourite colour is burple.

Fortunately, a demo of this sequel/remake of an old Activision gem has just been released, so find out for yourself if this is Eastern promise or Slavic slop. Some quick thoughts on it below.

Unfortunately it crashes rather frequently in Vista 64 so I haven't played all of it yet, but my impressions so far are THE COLOURS OH GOD SO MANY COLOURS AARGH MY BLEEDING EYES. It's actually fairly pretty, just in a very, very busy way, like Burnout with cyber-marshmallows. The play formula seems very much a giggle, if a familiar one - the driving and the shooting, the power-ups and the crashing, but with controls more akin to an FPS (UT's vehicles are the obvious reference point) than a Super Luigi Trolley. There is at least more focus on destruction, of both cars and scenery, than in similar fare, so multiplayer should offer some cheerful smashin' trashin' unpredictability.

It's also very Russian. I say this because an in-game character keeps shouting at me in Russian. Or at least I think it's Russian. It could be Cornish.

I wonder if it being released now, just a couple of months ahead of Paul W.S. 'Rubbish' Anderson's remake of Death Race, is accident or design. Probably the former as, really, Massive Cars With Massive Guns on are always in vogue to a certain audience.

Anyway, the demo's a chunky 800Mb and includes two cars and a bunch of weaponry - enough, I suspect, for you to make the crucial buy/don't buy decision. An alternative take on a similar idea is HL2 mod Die In Pain Rest In Pieces (which, by an uncanny coincidence, is exactly the phrase I greet my parents with). It's more vehicular deathmatch than a racer, but it shares the drive/shoot mouse'n'keyboard setup - and of course it's free. It is a bit brown, though. This, by contrast, has COLOURS OH GOD SO MANY COLOURS.