Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing

"Terrible, but hilarious"

It's a fact that a programmer is a bit like a mother. They are never quite ready to let their creation go out into the world because there's always one more thing to add, one more bug to fix, one more thing that could be improved. Quality games are delayed for ages as the programmers pamper the existing code to generate something of true quality. Big Rigs is not an example of such a game. In fact, Big Rigs appears to have a degenerate mother who's dumped its child into the real world as soon as possible whether or not it was prepared.

Big Rigs was obviously not prepared for release. The back of the game box states that this title will contain two very simple elements. Racing and police chases. Both are mysteriously non-existent. As well as a lot of functionality we take for granted in today's games. We simply expect a certain amount of realism in today's games, such as collisions, reasonable acceleration, maximum speeds.... and every last one of these things cannot be found in Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing

Every racing game created has included some sort of physics engine to simulate real-life and create a more immersive racing experience. As one might suspect, Big Rigs is completely void of anything even resembling a physics engine. This of course means that you are capable of doing literally impossible feats such as driving up or down a slope of any degree, even a perfectly vertical wall – without so much as a change in your speed.

Another basic facet of all games today are collisions. It's simple expected that when Object A and Object B's borders attempt to intersect, there is a collision of some sort, resulting in a change of speed and/or direction. Once again, this is not present in Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing. Your vehicle is quite capable of driving through anything and everything – houses, lamp posts, street signs, even the other racer - as if it were ethereal.

Speaking of the other racer, this game contains an interesting flaw that essentially defeats the entire purpose of the game's existence. The other racer does not move. At all. From the start of the game, your competitor will never budge an inch. You can leave your computer on all night long and when you awaken the next morning, it will still be sitting in that exact same spot. This creates an interesting scenario, as you are given an infinite amount of time to explore the level at your leisure.

However, in order to give this title at least a fair chance, I downloaded the patch to fix some of the numerous bugs present. It seems that this patch only enables your rival to putt along the race track going a mere 15 or 20 miles per hour, making laughably easy to outrun. In the event you are distracted from the race, as you most certainly will be, your rival will never cross the finish line. Despite my best efforts to get him to cross the finish line, he will simply come to a complete halt only a few feet short of finishing the race. This means you always win. Always. It is simply impossible to lose this game. To add insult to even more insult, the game presents you with a three handled trophy and a simple line of text for your victory.

“You're winner!”

These obvious and blatant flaws and missing features are what make this game unique. It could have been a simply terrible game that vanished into the myriad of games generated by businesses every year for a quick buck, but instead, has taken a route to a special kind of broken that ensures comedy making it at least entertaining, and better than a majority of the dreck mass produced each year.

So, bottom line. Is this WORTH paying for? Only if you don't pay a lot. This title is worth $10 at the most. But it'll be the hilarious $10 you've spent, worth at least a week or two of hilarity before the novelty wears off.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 08/23/05