Title: Super Laser Racer
Developer: New Star Games
Price: $9.99I've long since been a fan of all types of racing game. Nowadays I can often be found amusing myself with Gran Turismo where realism is king. Back in the day, when games came on cassette tape, I had to make do with Codemasters' and their overhead two-dimensional racing efforts; BMX Simulator, Grand Prix Simulator, Jet Ski Simulator and all the rest, not to mention Supersprint and Gremlin's Supercars.
Super Laser Racer brazenly tips its hat to the racing game of yesteryear, and marvellously proves that there's still plenty of life in the old dog.
My first impression however, was not a good one. The first screen you'll see on starting up the game, asks you to select a graphics mode/resolution - it does this every time. It would be nice if there was an option for it to not ask you next time. The list of available graphics modes was lengthy - my hardware does have a lot of available modes but I would have preferred if only different screen resolutions were listed. Here we have the resolution, colour depth and refresh rate which I don't think would mean a lot to your average gamer. He may not know which one to pick, but pick one he must. It would have been much simpler and neater to just stick to the existing monitor refresh rate.
If I were to be niggly, my mouse pointer also disappeared behind the game logo and the country flag on this page. OK, accidentally drawing things in the wrong order is hardly crime of the century but, being on the very first screen I saw, it completely gave me the wrong impression.
I'm glad I persevered.
There are two game modes available; Quick Race, and Tournament. A quick race is precisely what it says it is. Pick a ship, pick a track, and off you go for five laps of mayhem. This was the first game mode I chose and I immediately noticed I'd fallen foul of the age-old keyboard limitation where you can't press two cursor keys at once. Thankfully, you can even redefine your keyset mid-race, so I set it to my 8-bit favourite combo of A/S/J/N and SPACE. I was happy once again.
There are three sub-modes to Quick Race; Race, Eliminator and Survivor. A race is simply a single race. In the eliminator, the ship which finishes last gets eliminated until there is a winner, while Survivor mode sees players competing to stay alive for as long as possible with no possibility of repairing race crash damage as in the other modes.
Tournament mode, is a more organised and structured series of races. There are four tournaments in all but you're only allowed to compete in one at first - you unlock further tournaments by winning earlier ones. This is no mean feat, as being in first place does not necessarily guarantee success. The reason for this, is that both you, and the other competitors can pick up and use a variety of weapons, including laser, plasma, missile, cannon and mines.
There are also only three ships for you to choose from at first - by winning races, more ships become available with each having their own unique features and properties; speed, acceleration, steering and shield. You'll often find you have to go with the attribute that most appeals to you, as the others are generally contrasted so that what you gain in acceleration, for instance, you lose in top speed and handling.
The game controls are adequate, with a satisfying amount of inertia as you glide around the bends. If you try to leave the safety of the track, you'll slow yourself down and hitting the sides will cause damage to your ship. Fortunately you can fly through the pit lane which slows you down slightly, but repairs any damage inflicted during the course of the previous lap.
The sound is fairly primitive, 1980's old school arcade. Generally unremarkable but it does have a decent music soundtrack playing over it which helps to balance things out and somehow it all fits together nicely and works really well. The graphics are set to match - no fancy 3D stuff here. Everything is drawn with Tron-a-like glowing lines and its simplicity is what makes it excel.
If you eventually get bored with the tracks, the game has its own integrated track editor. Here you get to build your own tracks and design every aspect from the track layout, to power-ups, pit lanes, track objects and even the racing line the computer-controlled ships will use. I found it a little awkward to use at first but by playing with the example tracks that come with the game, you soon get the hang of it.
Super Laser Racer is a game I've really enjoyed playing and for the asking price, you can't really go wrong.
SCORESGraphics: 7/10
Sound: 8/10
Value for money: 9/10
Overall:9/10TEST SYSTEMAthlon64 X2 5000+, Nvidia 8500GT 512MB, 2GB RAM, Windows Vista Home Premium SP2.
