INFORMATION
Test Drive OffRoad 2 is a 1998 cross platform racing game.
It is the second entry in the Test Drive OffRoad series of video games. Test
Drive OffRoad 2 winds up being a better playing racing game than Test Drive 5.
Rated the Game 6.1 “It’s a empty feeling no matter how much air you catch or
how many times the rad commentator says “Awesome!” or “Sweeeet!”.
Ready for high-flying off-road action in a huge assortment
of the world’s most rugged trucks and SUVs? Wanna get your groove on with
intense pedal-stomping, fender-bending vehicular mayhem? Dying to check out
exotic and dangerous courses all over the world? You are? Really? Cool. Now all
you’ve gotta do is wait for a game that delivers all that stuff – because Test
Drive: Off-Road 2 sure doesn’t.
In all fairness (and I’m always fair, right?), off-roading
might not be the ideal sport to try to base a game around – or at least not in
the hyperfrantic over-the-top style Accolade chose for Off-Road 2. Most of your
time is spent with the accelerator smashed to the floor as you bounce all over
the track, brushing up against invisible walls and careening back onto the
course. Yeah, you get to ram other trucks and jeeps, and you get to make some
really big jumps – but so what? It’s an empty feeling no matter how much air
you catch or how many times the rad commentator says “Awesome!” or “Sweeeet!”
But even if extreme off-roading would make for a great game,
Test Drive: Off-Road 2 comes up short in so many different areas that it
wouldn’t matter anyway. There’s a total of 12 tracks, but it’s really six times
two – running a course backward is counted as a separate track. Only four of
those can be raced until you place high enough in competition, but when you do
that, the first new track that’s revealed is – you guessed – one of those four
in reverse.
There’s a whole mess of cars here – some are locked out
until you prove yourself, of course – but absolutely zero specs on what you can
expect out of them when you hit the dirt. Terrain graphics are a woolly tangle
of polygons and pixels, and the cars are plain-Jane renderings on a par with
the pickup truck at the start of Redneck Rampage. Get an eyeful of this stuff,
and you’ll be wondering how the same company that put out the great-looking
Test Drive 5 could try to pawn this outmoded PlayStation game on unsuspecting
fans of arcade-style racing. Toss in some high weirdness with the frame rate –
it’s either really choppy or the graphics just make it seem that way – and
engine sound effects that sound like Keith Emerson’s first attempt at playing a
Moog, and you’ve basically got nothing worth watching here unless you want to
admire the digitized 2D images of lifeguards or Arabs on camels.
Topping it all off is one of the laziest interface designs
I’ve had the displeasure of dealing with in a long time. Want a first-person
perspective? Fine – you don’t get a hood, wheel, or speedometer, just a
ground-level view of those dubious terrain graphics. That worked OK in Test
Drive 5, but in Off-Road 2 it makes it look like you’re tearing through the
desert on a jet-powered luge.
Then again, you might have trouble finding that first-person
perspective because the manual doesn’t tell you what the views (0-7) are;
you’ve got to load up a race and check it out until you get the one you want.
Feel like changing button assignments? Too bad – there’s no option to assign
any commands to keys or buttons. I know, you want to check out the instant
replay and savor some of those killer jumps you made in the last race – but
you’re out of luck again because there’s absolutely no instant replay
whatsoever.
And a word of warning to you fans of hard core metal and
industrial rock who might be tempted to pick this game up for the soundtrack
tunes by Sevendust, Gravity Kills, and Fear Factory: Don’t bother. There’s a
total of four tunes here (guess it matches the measly number of available
tracks at the start of the game), and only one of them is worth a listen
SCREENSHOTS
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
System= Pentium III CPU 500 MHz
RAM= 128 MB
Video Memory= 16 MB
Size= 51.81 MB
OS= Windows 98, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, Windows 8
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