Zone Raiders

"Digital Find and Seek."

Do you like being confused? Do you like being bored frequently… and frustrated? Do you enjoy playing a game with seemingly no plot, “supported” by graphics that a 5-year-old with ACAD could make? If you have answered YES to any of these questions, then Zone Raiders is the game for you!

Alright, Zone Raiders is a shooter game released in 1995 released by Virgin Interactive. If you have ever played Quarantine, then you might enjoy this game. You drive/float around a poorly drawn city finding parts and items for your city gang.

Story: 2/10
The story is so loosely put together that it couldn’t tie a square knot. You drive a hovercraft car for a gang called the Raiders. Who are the raiders? What city are you in? What century is it? You never find out! You are given a one-sentence mission briefing, most are centered on finding parts for a “jet”. You appear to be a renegade gang, which is fighting against the ECO. What is the ECO and what are the goals of your gang? Don’t lose sleep over it because YOU NEVER FIND OUT!

Controls: 4/10
This is one of the shining rocks in this basket of lumpy coals… but the gameplay isn’t even that shiny anyway… it’s probably more like a tourmaline. You drive a hovercraft vehicle. This is fun because driving a hovercraft car is very different than a normal car because you float above the ground. Handling the cars takes a little be to master, but after that you will wish you always had a hovercraft in all your video games.

Graphics: 1/10
The graphics are terrible. These graphics are ridiculous for being released in 1995. The backgrounds are incredibly simple and dull. Your enemies are graphically very poor and stale. Every enemy you see will look like the previous enemy, just with different colors perhaps or maybe a slightly different shape. The levels look more like racing tracks instead of a city landscape.

Gameplay: 2/10
This game can be clarified as digital find and seek. Every mission you have to drive around and look for 2-3 items and it takes you about 20-40 minutes each mission. This game is PAINFULLY slow. Instead of intricate and beautiful city streets and bustling highways that the game is suppose to take place in, you are stuck in terrible polygonal looping tracks that use pale annoying colors. A “police station” looks just like the city ''museum''. When I first played this game I thought it was a racing game because all the city street have guard rails and it looks like a racing game. The game is NOT FUN to play! I only played it because I wrote a FAQ for it.

Overall: 2/10
This game is a waste of time. Only play Zone Raiders if you love hovercrafts and want to see an accurate depiction of how they handle. If for some reason you are going to play this game… then you will find my FAQ helpful.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 11/10/03