Hard Drivin'

"Sega forgot the g, that makes the game hardcore....... right?"

Hard Drivin is one of the first real 3D games on a home console, now usually with firsts the developers poured their hearts into the design of the groundbreaking title and tried to make everything appealing to the gamer in order to be remembered, well not here.

Gameplay 3
Oh god its just horrible. I can't believe they would let a game come out on the market playing like this abysmal crap. The speed is slower than anything else out there at the time. The game moves slower than a snails pace which is inexcusable even for the time. Control is just as bad with no real response from your vehicle. Its like trying to drive a fully loaded 18 wheeler at Daytona with your eyes covered and with-out sleeping for 48 hours. You can switch transmission from automatic, or standard and there are three levels of difficulty. Also you can switch the traffic lanes from right to left(which is very stupid unless your a European gamer who just moved to the U.S.). There are two tracks, the speed track and the stunt track. The speed track goes under most of the stunts, but has this 180 degree turn that will almost always make you go off it and crash. The stunt track has a large(nearly impossible)loop and a bridge jump. The stunts aren't bad but the lacks of speed and control turn them into nearly impossible feats.

Graphics 7
I was amazed because they were polygonal graphics in 1989, on a home console. SNES racing games didn't look like this until the release of Stunt Race FX(which was much better)in 1994. They were very simplistic polygons and were extremely boxy and un-rounded, however for the time they were stunning.

Music 1
There was very little music in the game and what did exist was hardly noticeable and not worth mentioning. When you crash there's a tiny piece of music that plays every time that will make you go insane, its so stupid, I'm just getting angry thinking about it.

Difficulty Very Hard
Due to the horrid control and painful slowness, Hard Drivin'
is much more difficult than it should be. The stunt course to me is slightly easier that the speed course, but not by much.

Overall 3
The game is basically garbage and if you want it you'll have no trouble whatsoever securing yourself a copy from a used video game store and on Ebay you can get it for around $3.00 complete.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 02/22/04