"All cars should have guns"

Hi-Octane is a game that provides the one dream that will never come true but is worth having anyway: that one could drive a car with miniguns and missile launchers in the front end. You get to drive such a car in Hi-Octane, and the car also comes replete with hovering capabilities and an amount of armor proportional to the car you select (this is the future, after all). There are a lot of possibilities in such a concept. Unfortunately, it was dumbed down to the lowest common denominator here, but there is still fun to be had with this futuristic racing title.

You are presented with a choice of seven hovercars in the beginning of Hi-Octane, from a sports car-type get-up to a big hunk of metal that looks like a donut to a diesel truck. All of them have one mission: to run you off the road with a narrow assortment of guns and other devices. Seeing as how you drive a hovercar, your standard oil slick is not going to do here. You drive around picking up icons to enhance the power of your machine guns and missiles, make your car go faster, and refill your fuel and shields. Maintaining your car is doubly difficult when seven other racers are on your tail vying for first place. If you don't crash a whole lot and use your boosters constantly, you can often speed ahead of the competition and still have leeway to run into a few walls or ravines. This results in lapping the overtly slow, which soon makes the game tiresome and gives you the feeling of a guaranteed win 100% of the time. Fuel and shield stops are scattered throughout the eight tracks, which range from a basic circle to a straight line (the death match arena). No mode other than tournament or single race will see a lot of play time except in experimentation.

Handled with a joystick, all cars in Hi-Octane run beautifully. Almost every mistake made while driving is your fault if you mess up with the joystick. Keyboard control is a bit more laborious but not too much of a hassle if you stay locked on the Up key and whatever key boosters function under. Music is a bit lacking, but settles in the background like it's supposed to. It doesn't factor heavily enough to be loud and in your face, and Bullfrog, the makers of the game, realized this. A simple cruise with light music in the background is good enough for me, but the game's relative docility (astounding for a racing game) will bore racing fans quickly.

By today's standards, the graphics are far outdated and have not aged very well. You can't even run the game hardly without a specific graphics card, which is also out of date and replaced by images far superior, so this will remain a relic of the past unless you find the PlayStation copy and are able to play it. It looks like they tried very hard -- almost too hard -- to make the mountainous backgrounds and cars look good and not the result of slopped-together hack work. The camera stays behind you at all times until someone puts your car out of commission, and then you'll see your icons explode out of your car in a multi-angle display that leaves you scrambling to recover them.

Like I said, it's probably hard to play this on the PC unless you still have the same old graphics card from 1995 (when this game was released). You're better off checking the market for a PS-X copy, where the gameplay in that port is far inferior to the mastery of the computer. A friend will enjoy it on their own, since the multiplayer possibilities are practically nil. While racing games are best suited for buddies who wish to outdrive each other, Hi-Octane puts you in the solitude of your own study (or wherever you keep the computer) to indulge in a futuristic race full of firepower and incredible speed. It can pacify the easily amused, but only by giving it a moderately lengthy go-through will you be able to make your own final decision on its quality, or lack thereof.

Score: 7

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 04/17/02, Updated 04/17/02