Destruction Derby 2 

by Psygnosis  Reviewed by: Sean Anderson  

Overview

So I got this new system -- a P5-133 with a 4MB ATI 3D Pro Turbo and 64 MB of 60ns EDO RAM. It smokes the Dell 166 I've got at work, but to give it that little bit of special "Home PC" flavor and remind myself I'm not actually at work when I'm at home, I needed to install a cool new game to challenge that video card. I was considering installing one of my favorite games from last year, Destruction Derby, when Chad emailed me and said "Hey, we just got the new Destruction Derby and it's for Win 95. Wanna review it?"

"Will do," I typed (we never really talk).

ATI 3D Pro Turbo yawned. "Bring it on," she hummed.

So, in a nutshell, here's the good stuff you get for your money: "Designed for Win 95," 35 MB worth of two pretty cool AVIs (Intro.avi and outro.avi), lots more tracks and better graphics. On the negative side, you get even more annoying commentary (if you can believe that), an even less intuitive UI, and you'll be lucky if your joystick works (Win 95's joystick calibration tool thought mine worked just fine, but DD2 didn't even know it was there). Oh, and when you collide with someone really hard, you usually go flying up in the air about a hundred feet. I'm no psychiatrist, but I really think this game may be best for overcoming fear of falling.

Gameplay

From the console game "alphabet screen" where you enter your name, to the lack of any control in the "replay" area, the UI is for me what really drags this game down. True, the UI isn't really the game per se, but it shows an overall lack of attention to detail. Hint number one to Psygnosis' designers: The ESCAPE key is not intuitive navigation! Maybe I'm an idiot, but I can't count how many times I looked at the buttons at the bottom of the screen and said to myself, "Okay, I can choose from that blob of stuff or that blob of stuff, but neither of them look like forward to the next menu or backward to the race." As for the replay, all you get to do is watch the same race from the same vantage point as you just ran it, except this time you don't have any control.

Once you get past the menu system, though, the game's not all that horrible. The races are fairly long, and even if you fall behind at the start you may still catch up by the end, once other cars start doing the fiberglass tango and then stopping for a post-coital smoke alongside the road. Although winnable, it's not nearly as easy in this version to score points by wiping out your fellow drivers. In fact, I don't really have any idea how I scored all the points I did. In version 1 you could be sure you'd scored when you heard a scream or a "You'll regret that!" or a maniacal laugh. Now all you hear is one indistinct yell. And okay, when I just went back to the game to hear the sound again (it's Win 95, after all), the game crashed on me when I landed at the bottom of a thousand-foot jump, but the music is still playing. Neat-o. That actually makes this easy on me -- I'm feeling less and less like I need to justify such a low score. In fact, I'm thinking of lowering it. Better move on.

Multiplayer Support

Yeah, sure it supports multiplayer. Just like the manual says: "You and up to nine friends [can] race individually against the rest of the Destruction Derby crew." All you have to do is enter all your names in the alphabet screen, and when it's your turn you just have to take your seat in front of the computer while your nine friends watch. Gee, we sure have come a long way since pinball!

Originality/Cool Features

If you like wackiness in your auto racing or you think flying through the air and landing on the side of a cliff is cooler than driving, you'd probably like this game. Evel Knievel would really dig it. I don't think "wackiness" was the intended effect, but do you remember that racing game from about 5 years ago where you tried to kill everyone and you bought missiles and stuff for your car and you went 900 miles an hour and when you hit a bump you flew about 5 miles? Deathmatch 2000? Deathrace? Deathsomething? It reminds me of that.

Graphics

The graphics are 320x240, which isn't great—but if you try real hard you can pretend those big chunks of color on the canyon walls are actually just 8" x 8" rocks. True, 320x240 as a default isn't a bad thing considering that not everyone has a 4 MB SGRAM 3D video card. I imagine if it were 640x480 by default, a lot of people would be very upset, but if Duke Nukem, Quake and others can offer a choice of screen resolutions, why can't Destruction Derby 2? In fact, the graphics were at times too fast. In Red Pike Arena, the actual "Destruction Derby" site, things move so quickly that you can't really see other cars to hit them. If you try to turn around to ram them with your rear bumper, the "camera" doesn't turn nearly fast enough so you never really know where you're going.

Audio

Yes, the commentator is even more annoying than the Robin Leach-esque character from DD1. "Hey! Watch the paint work!" was my least favorite, followed by some weird kind of "Arrrgh!" I actually missed the other drivers' yells and curses.

The major bonus with this game is that every time it crashes under Win 95, the music continues so you can go on with other tasks to the pounding beat of thrill-a-minute industrial bass lines.

Installation and Setup

Installation is clean and uses Win 95's UninstallShield, so uninstall (executed permanently just a few seconds ago) was clean, too. Setup worked, but had the same kind of unintuitive menu system as the rest of the game.

System Requirements

Pentium 75 Processor, 8 MB RAM (DOS), 16 MB RAM (Windows 95), 2X CD-ROM drive, PCI, SVGA adapter, SoundBlaster and compatibles

Bottom Line

Your best bet is to find Destruction Derby 1 bundled free with one of the new 3D video cards. I saw one just the other day. If you don't need a new video card and you really have to crunch some metal, pick up DD1 anyway.