POD

"Cars go whoosh, drivers go WOW THATS FAST! You go zzzzzzz...."

POD is a futuristic racer; and according to its makers the world is a desolate and unfriendly place all those years down the track. The inhabitants build and maintain really fast cars to pass the time away, but unfortunately this world is about to be brought to it's end by some sort of nasty thing. Naturally the only way to decide who is aboard the escape pod when the time comes is by staging races. You must win the tournament to save your hide, are you up to the challenge? All signs point towards no!

GRAPHICS
The world of POD is a dark and seedy one, and this has been represented duly by these lovely visuals. It has a very ominous feeling about it all the time with some lovely dark colours being put into effect all the time. The backgrounds are all well detailed without being too flashy and distracting you from driving really fast and winning (I hate that, just had to get it off my chest). There are some lovely scenes such as picturesque mountainsides or the more frantic indoor tracks complete with big boxes and many other pretty obstacles. Everything can seem a bit creepy as it's quite a sombre mood that POD sets, it seems as if something bad could jump out at you from behind every corner and it can make a player quite jumpy. As far as tension goes, POD is a big winner, if you wanted you could follow that wise old saying and cut it with a knife. Everything moves along at a solid pace, with slow down only occurring when the action is very intense and the screen is filled to the brim with cars and other objects.
The cars have some innovative designs; they look very sleek, very aerodynamic. They look as if they were MEANT to go up to ridiculously dangerous speeds. There are quite a few natural weapons on them, with all sorts of spikes and pointy things sticking out from all angles. It won't help you win races but it looks fantastic. One problem that they do have is that most of them are dark colours, meaning it can be hard to distinguish them from the background, they don't show up too well in the rear view mirror either. FMV sequences don't play too big a part here, there are just a few small ones basically explaining the plight that the inhabitants of the planet are in. Nothing too big or special but at least they look good. Graphical effects are a bit more common with some great neon type lighting throughout the tracks and bright, hot sparks shooting all over the place. It's a nice little injection of colour into POD.
Overall, the graphics are a little too gloomy for my liking. It can be a very dull outlook after playing it for a long time and you'll eventually just want to switch to a cute little platformer just to get some more variety rather than staring at these blacks, browns and greys forever. A nice try but it just misses the mark by that little bit.

SOUND
Sound is not used to a great extent, there definitely should have been more time spent here as it comes across as a poorly done job. Background music is mainly made up of deep, gloomier music that tries to accompany the graphics and add even more atmosphere to the thing. Unfortunately it doesn't quite pull it off and sounds quite half-assed once you really listen to it. It's not a very memorable soundtrack and you won't be shedding tears as you reach for the volume control, this type of music may appeal to some of you out there but it doesn't really work too well in POD. The tracks don't have enough variety in them and you could swear that you were just hearing the same one over and over again (unless of course there is only one and I'm wrong). It becomes pretty much unbearable after listening to it for even a shorter period of time.
Sound effects unfortunately do not improve upon this minimal amount of quality and just add to the unbearableness of it all. The vehicles make a bit of a whining sound and don't really satisfy, we want to hear the fast cars make grunty noises! Not this weak little whooshy stuff! When you bang into a wall the accompanying sound effect is quite tinny and also pretty pathetic, going past this there's really nothing else at all to greet your ears. It's actually quite sparse and will just make it easier to throw the speaker out of the window should the need arise.
Overall, the sound is one of the least enjoyable areas of POD. It's lacking in both quantity and quality and will make your eardrums bleed after extended listening periods (well it might happen!). It's not the most enjoyable stuff you'll ever hear and luckily the soundtrack is an easily forgettable one, imagine the pain walking around with one of those stuck in your head!

GAMEPLAY
The gameplay of POD focuses on speed rather than action, sort of like the Wipeout series minus all of the weapons. The controls are dead simple, all you have to do is use the four arrow keys to move your vehicle around, there are no weapons, no items.....nothing else at all to utilise. This may make the game seem overly simplistic, but once you're reaching those terrifying speeds around the kaleidoscopic tracks you'll be very thankful for the lack of other distractions. Having to worry about anything else would surely be the end anyone, even those with reflexes like a cat.
The track design is pretty good, there's a nice range designed to test every skill needed to race a vehicle of this power. You'll need to be extremely agile to be able to take those long, winding corners without slowing down too much and that takes a lot of practice. It is not a game that you can just pick up and thrash the opposition at; I to this day have still not finished the game in first place and probably never will. The tracks are too challenging for their own good, they can just get downright frustrating as a player crashes into the wall for the tenth time inside a minute.
There isn't a huge amount of variety as far as the game modes of POD go. The main mode the normal tournament in which you have to race on all of the tracks and hopefully come out of the race unscathed and on that pod off of the planet. The only other mode that is worth a look is the custom tournament, you get to choose which tracks to take part on and which order they are raced in, you can even choose the same track ten times if that's what you want. A lovely little bit of customisation on offer there.
The vehicles that are given to you each specialise in different categories, one may have a fast speed and lousy turning or another may boast good acceleration and a shabbier high speed. You should choose a car that tailors to your driving preference and stick with it, of course if none of them please you then you can always tinker around with it. You can adjust all of the ratios to make the vehicle suit your racing style, if you REALLY want to be successful then that is the right way to go about the whole thing. There probably should have been a choice of more than six cars as it can be hard to find one that really appeals to you as the player (they need a convertible damn it!).
Overall, the gameplay has a few good ideas, but there doesn't seem to be enough body to it to really make POD well worth your time. Whilst there are a lot of high speeds and tight corners, there should have been more of a focus placed on action to make it a more heart-stopping game than it actually is. There was potential here but it was let down quite a bit in execution.

LIFESPAN
The lifespan of POD is not so good, the lack of decent game modes hampers it considerably and the ho-hum gameplay kills off what was left of it. Only die hard fans of futuristic racers and accompanying genres will find some good replay value here, the rest of us will simply move on in quite a hurry forgetting the game completely. There's just nothing in the game with the ability to keep drawing them back time and time again, it could have been so good, but instead it turned out to be another game worth only a passing glance and nothing more.

FUN FACTOR
The fun factor is also lacking, more than anything POD is an annoying game as it is too hard to get into for a beginner and you'll just end up smashing into the walls a lot. You have to be damned good to enjoy this game because otherwise you'll just be swearing a lot and breaking things because the vehicles just won't turn the corners quick enough. It's a very shallow game and from past experiences shallow games are never exactly the most enjoyable games to play. A noble effort once again but there just always seems to be something missing.

CHALLENGE
The challenge of POD would have to be somewhere between VERY HARD and VERY VERY HARD. The tracks are very challenging and will require quite a bit of mastery before you can tackle them with any type of confidence at all. This game can leave you feeling bitter and morose at the same time because the game is just too difficult. There is a bit of a difficulty range in the tracks, but this only means that on the easier tracks you're not going to come last by as big a margin as previously thought. If you have any amount of sanity then POD will do it's best to completely eradicate it.

THE FINAL PARAGRAPH
Whilst it had a few nice ideas that could have worked out with a little bit more effort put into the actual making of the game, POD falls well short of the competition and looks rather inferior when compared to other futuristic racers such as the Wipeouts. A poor sound scheme, semi-boring gameplay and a ridiculous learning curve and challenge all add to the demise of POD, it's a game that you may try out for a short period of time but then move on to greener pastures just as quickly. It's only worth checking out properly if this is a genre that you absolutely love, a liking of this type of game will not suffice. It's either flat out love or just nothing at all. It's an average game that isn't worth too much of your time, thus ends the lesson.
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GOOD POINTS
- The graphics are reasonably sharp and look pretty good
- It doesn't get much faster than this
- Make your own tournaments! WHOOP!

NOT SO GOOD POINTS
- The sound is of poor quality, it sounds bad.......real bad
- Too tough to get into, you'll give up in a big hurry
- A small lifespan, you won't stick around to see the end
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GRAPHICS - 8/10
SOUND - 4/10
GAMEPLAY - 6/10
LIFESPAN - 5/10
FUN FACTOR - 4/10
CHALLENGE - 3/10
OVERALL - 5/10

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 07/21/00, Updated 07/21/00