Ballistics

Round and round it goes, and where it stops is at the finish line.

Ballistics, a PC release from Xicat Interactive and Grin, bills itself as the NASCAR of the future. Well, that’s not exactly true. However, this is a game that is all about speed and reflexes. Ok, the sound isn’t much, but the graphics are can be very intense when you are flying past them at more than 260 miles per hour.

This is a futuristic racing game. As the driver, you are strapped to a machine that hovers above, but is connected to a winding tube, which serves as the track. Apparently there is a magnetic field, which keeps you attached. The idea is to steer your way through the twists and turns, avoiding the hazards that have been placed in your way while outmaneuvering and outpowering the competition. There are power-ups, of sorts, along the tracks, which will cool your engine or give you a power boost.

More likely than not, these nice little adjuncts are close to impediments which, if real, would break the neck of any racer. Imagine going 300 mph and hitting a wall while clinging to a runaway motorcycle.

The challenge with this game is that, even at the rookie level, any clipping of the obstacles will slow you down while the other racers will blow on past, seemingly oblivious to all the interesting diversions the track has to offer.

There are several ways to play the game: as a single player, in the competition series of races, or multiplayer. Forget the tutorial – this is managed by the game, and players get very little chance to test out their skills. The tutorial is a verbal explanation, without benefit of hands-on experience, of the game.

A major setback was that the game, as installed from the box, crashed a lot. The cursor wouldn’t go to the continue or go buttons, and once that was bypassed by putting the game in a window (rather than full screen), the program crashed. A trip to the Xicat Web site yielded links to the patch area. Once downloaded and installed, the patch took care of most of the crashing problems.

As with a lot of racing games, if you enter the campaign (career) mode, you can win enough money to upgrade your machine, which will enable players to compete at a higher level.

When it comes to control elements, and even though it is a driving game, forget any peripherals that you may have installed. You can do rather nicely with either the keyboard/mouse controls, or a gamepad. It only takes a steady finger on the accelerator, as well as an occasional tap on the directional key to alter the course and help players avoid the major threats to your fast track to success.

The sound, as mentioned, does not add much to the game. There is an occasional ‘clang’ when you hit an obstacle, but other than the introductory narration, this game seems rather short in sound.

Graphically, the game is quite nice. The courses are nicely realized, and though some of the obstacles look two-dimensional in an otherwise three-dimensional world, the game flow is quite good.

Ballistics is, by no means, the next generation of driving game, but it is a romp through the hyper zones of speed, with the key element being the reflexes of players.

This game is rated for Everyone.

Install: Hard
Count this as a weird installation. The game bypasses the 100-percent install meter and takes off in excess of 500 percent while installing the track elements

Gameplay: 7
Once you enter a race, the game moves along as a flying pace – unless it crashes and leaves the game screen as wallpaper on your computer.

Graphics: 7
A mixed bag here – the courses and racers look very nice, but some of the obstacles have a sharp pixel outline and look two-dimensional.

Sound: 6
Though decent, the sound effects are rather elementary.

Difficulty: 6.5
There seems to be little variety between the difficulty levels – you need to run a near-flawless race to move ahead of the pack.

Concept: 8
This is definitely a different style of racing which is, for the most part, well done.

Multiplayer: 7.5
You can connect via a LAN or the Internet with other human racers, and the action is the same.

Overall: 7
Having to patch a game out of the box in order to make it work it not a good thing. The crossing of two-dimensional and three-dimensional graphical elements also seems at odds. However, if you are into reflexive racing, following a designated course with little variation other than speed, this might be the type of game you would enjoy.