365//365: Day 044 – Vigilante 8 (PSX) [Quickie]

The car combat genre wasn’t solely represented by Singletrac or the Twisted Metal franchise. Activision threw their hat into the ring with their own car combat title called Viginalte 8. Released months before Twisted Metal 3, it looked to take over the reigns of car combat king on the Sony PlayStation. After how well Twisted Metal 2 did, would Vigilante 8 match up in anyway? Yes and no.

Vehicular detail is spot on and never look sloppy, until they get damaged of course.

One thing that Vigilante 8 nails with a huge success, is the visual aspects. Vehicular detail is astounding, surpassing even the clean and expertly detailed vehicles featured in Rogue Trip. The stages themselves are pretty well detailed, offering hidden areas, with tons of space to explore, and a surprisingly good frame rate throughout. There’s detail abound, and all of it looks exceptionally for not only for the year it was released, but for a PlayStation title in general. The audio isn’t bad either, although nothing truly memorable. The gunfire, explosions and other sounds come off as standard fare, while the music is something that gets lost in the experience. One neat feature Vigilante 8 had was loading all of the match data into the systems RAM, enabling you to pop in a music CD to play during that said match. Once the match was over, you had to pop the game CD back in, but it basically lets you put in your own soundtrack during the gameplay. Reload from Metallica fit in exceptionally well with this gimmick.

Everything else about Vigilante 8 either falls short of Twisted Metal 2′s high standards, or falls below average for the genre as a whole. The controls feel just a bit too stiff, although functional enough not to give you a migraine. Weapon variety comes off as lacking, whether its compared to Twisted Metal or on its own merits. For the most part, they are all unimaginative, as they are all stock power ups, like the homing missile, the napalm blast, the power missile, and so on. The enemy AI is competent enough, and never gangs up on you like most other games in the genre, but when they are low on health, they run, run, run. It’s annoying if you have nothing but your machine gun weapon, as lining up your shots is about as accurate as trying to hit the 80th floor of the Empire States Building with a slab of bologna. Finally, while Viginante 8 certainly has plenty of fun moments, ultimately, it pales to the visceral thrills of Twisted Metal 2, as well as the overall package of Rogue Trip.

Each stage is put together surprisingly well, with great lighting, a lot to blow up and a large enough space to unleash vehicular hell in.

It’s good to have options when it comes to any genre. While Vigilante 8 does not overthrow Twisted Metal 2 as the king of the vehicular combat universe, it does decimate any efforts that 989 Studios vomited out wit Twisted Metal 3 and 4. It gave us fans of the genre a new place to drive off the deep end, and mount up with stock weaponry on our vehicles. Definitely worth checking out, though don’t expect anything new or refreshing in the genre.

Rating: 6.8