Paris-Dakar Rally Special! Review by: Azul Fria - 6/10
Start your engines as it is racing time.Note: The reason I am using the angry face is because I went through so much time typing this thing and didn't put a simple title for the thread and when I went to preview the thread to see everything was formatted right, the little P.O.S. message came up about suggesting if I am a Newbie then blah blah blah, I can't be bothered to remember the whole damn message popped up. I only wanted to preview the message not submit it. Then when I went back to add the title, everything I sacrificed blood, sweat and tears for is gone and now I have to type this review all over. F.M.L. Grrrrrrr!
OVERVIEW
If you need help playing this game, I also made a walkthrough thread for this game. Check it out. You are an aspiring young racer from Tokyo, Japan who is preparing to participate in the annual Paris-Dakar Rally. You start off by preparing your car to race then you fly off to Paris, France to race then you go through seven stages total. From stages 2 through 6, you are trying to make your to Dakar, Senegal (African country) and then have a final race in Dakar. Along the way you will have to deal with some crazy opponents who will do all they can to knock you off the road. You have a certain amount of hits you can take before the game is over so stay on your toes. It is all about making it to the finish line by hook or by crook.
GAMEPLAY - C+
Where do I start? For the most part you are driving around avoiding cars and other obstacles but during the course of the game you will see a whole bunch of stuff that displaces all kinds of modern physics and lots of genre changes sometimes during the middle of a level. One moment you are driving then next you are forced to get out of your car and perform some platformer gameplay by making it to a switch to relieve a barrier and re-enter the vehicle to continue forward. Not so bad on paper, but the surprise of it all is that your character is immune to falls from a high place that no normal person would even survive it. Then in another level, your car will be become a submarine and have the ability to shoot bullets. (No the car does not turn into a submarine, it just swims). When you reach the penultimate level, you are fighting in a vertical scrolling top-down shooter. The first two races are no cakewalk either. You are not truly racing against anybody, you are merely driving to the finish line in the quickest time possible. All the while you are dodging cars and debris but the biggest obstacle here are those damn speed demons coming from behind that will smash you into smithereens if you are not fast enough yet the other AI cars can conveniently dodge out of the way with no problem at all. Only exception is in the second race where the speeders will cream anyone on the left hand side that can't get out of the way in time. Only the stoppers you lay down will repel them and other cars. The final level is more of a bonus level as you are simply driving to the finish line with no real competition and making careful twists and turns and you get an ending.
The bonus game is reminiscent of the bonus game from Pinball for the NES/Famicom where in this case, your character is the pinball and the car is the bar on the bottom as you try to catch all the G's and T's. There was another game like that I think but can't remember the name of it.
GRAPHICS - B-
Not too impressed by most of the graphics. In the beginning, all the characters look the same except for a change of color and there are a couple women to differentiate them from the men. The buildings are almost all too generic. The only building that stands out from the others is the one that says Rinku K. K. (Rinku is actually in Japanese hiragana). The stages actually have beautiful scenery but some of them look like they were drawn in Microsoft Paint. In the water level, you can see the generic lighting method used on the mountains below. Color a small strip of the part below the tracing black or darker shade of the actual mountain on one side then on the other side, color a small strip of the mountain tracing a litter shade. The best scenery of the game is the final shot at the end when you are on the beach.
SOUND/MUSIC - D+
The sound is an ear killer. People who played Mega Man 2 for the Gameboy will be familiar with what I am taking about. Though the melodies are all good catchy tunes, the pitch of some of the music is enough to drive you insane. I am also not fond of the continuous sound used during the typewriter style of speaking. I prefer all the text on the screen at a time then hit a button to see more if there is more to be said. If it was different sounds for different characters talking, I would be fine with that.
CONTROLS - C+
Sometimes you are moving so fast that you will forget to slow down to avoid a hazard before it is too late. The controls are of higher precision during the second race where you can push a direction and you can go there when there is an opening but for other levels where you get out of the car, you have to time your jumps carefully because you can easily miss as the character does not jump that far.
REPLAY VALUE - C-
Whether you want to play this game again or not is up to you. It is not a bad game or a good game. It is right there in the middle. You can prefer to play it again to get better times but there are other games out there that are better than this game. It is all about your preference.
OVERALL - C
As stated it is not a bad game or good game. It is right down the middle. I had an OK time with it as it was a challenge of sorts but at least I did not have to deal with any frustrations with the game. Thus the final grade I give will be an average C.
Graphics
7 Sound
5 Addictive
4 Depth
4 Story
3 Difficulty
5