Vigilante 8

"Vigilante 8? Vigilante Great!"

I've never played another game quite like Vigilante 8. It was just one of those rentals for the sake of having something rented. This game I seriously underrated and should be in a lot more people's collections. I just couldn't figure out if the 8 was there because there were initially 8 characters or so the abbreviation of the game would be V8 like a car engine.

The graphics for V8 are good. It's not top shelf like Kirby 64, but it's not Superman 64 either. This game takes advantage of the N64 Expansion Pack Accessory for an extra graphical punch.

This game is set in the 1970's based on the oil crisis that actually happened. The main story is centered on 2 gangs. The Coyotes and the Vigilantes. The leader of the Coyotes is a man named Sid Burns he has side burns (lol get it) and is hired for a pretty penny to by any means possible, to cripple America's oil supply even further for unknown reasons. The heroic leader of the Vigilantes, Convoy, who drives a semi-trailer truck, is out to stop him. The plot is fairly simple. The characters that are either from one gang or the other are likeable and very original. A psychotic farmer who has nuclear bees, a bounty hunter with an afro, and a short guy who is obsessed with disco and drives one of those discontinued cars are just a few of them. Each character has their own four-mission story that intertwines with their gang leaders and one rival gang opponents'. There are 5 un-lockable characters that all have their own tale as well. One is even from neither gang and has a story from a different point of view than the others.

This game has great sound. The handful of music tracks ranges from aggressive to quick to whimsical. There are a few one-line voice-overs that sound great as well.

V8 is a lot of fun. It's many loads of fun in fact. In the game, you drive around in 70's cars defeating the legions of evil or conquering the legions of good. But you don't drive just any cars. You drive cars that can support weapons. These weapons (missiles, cannons, mortars, etc) are picked up by driving over them like you might expect and become attached to your car for the time being. There are also shields and other power-ups as well. Something that you might not expect is that you can input combos before firing the weapon to fire a more powerful or effective shot. Each character's unique car gets a special weapon that causes destruction on many levels. Actually, some are useless, but they sound powerful and some make you want to run and cry. When an enemy car is initially destroyed, it is “wrecked”. When a car is “wrecked” you can pull off a previously mentioned combo or use a special to “total” it for more points before it blows up. The cars shoot at each other and blow up. That is how a mission is won. In story mode, there are structures to protect/destroy that are part of the mission as well. At the end of a mission, you get a percentage and a ranking to show how well you did. The N64 controller handles V8 with great ease too.

There are a few things to unlock in V8. A couple extra stages and 5 extra characters are waiting for you. However, I've poured hours into V8 multiplayer and co-op campaign. V8 is saved with a memory card or a password system that is still not as long as Metroid's. The game also supports 3 difficulty settings and “survival” mode. In survival, the enemy AI cars just keep coming until you die. Your high score is how many enemy cars you've destroyed.

Vigilante 8 is an awesome game from the N64/PSOne era of video games. If you see it used at a game store, or at a yard sale, you should definitely pick this one up and plop it in your old N64 and give it a go. I give it an 8/10. Vigilante 8. How fitting.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/08/05