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The year is 1976
but it's a different 1976. So starts the introduction to Interstate '76, from
Activision. Law and order has gone to hell in a handcart in the southern states
of the US. (Cries of "so how does this 1976 vary from our version then?"
from the back of the audience). The cops either don't care or have been bought
off. The only law in this part of the world are the auto-vigilantes, men and
woman who drive around in heavily armed muscle cars bringing law to the lawless
and justice to the unjust.
Unknown to you, your sister Jade was one of these heroes secretly fighting for
right (though how this fact remained a secret I will never know. Didn't anyone
notice the natty heavy calibre machine guns attached to her car as it sat outside
the family home?). Unfortunately, Jade's part time job only came to light when
she met a sticky end out in the desert. All you have to remind yourself of her
is her car which fortunately didn't get banged up too badly during her demise
and a letter from her pointing a finger at a dude called Antonio Malochio. Oh
and a burning desire for revenge. Your name? Groove Champion. No shit.
(Editorial note. The GDR is a responsible publication which recognises its obligations to the delicate sensibilities of its younger readers. The use of profanities such as 'shit' is strongly discouraged and was only permitted on this occasion on the insistence of the reviewer who maintained that its presence was necessary to provide a period feel to the review. The Editorial staff of the GDR would like to assure concerned parents that in the normal course of events, the use of profanity by some jive-assed shithead will not be tolerated.)
Interstate '76 is a game of two parts. On the one hand you have the TRIP (it stands for Total Recreational Interactive Production though the game helpfully also describes it as a "funky single-player unmitigated vengeance quest" just so you know what you're getting into). On the other hand, you have the melee option which allows you to set up battles and blast away at computerised opponents without bothering about the story element or even to go online and tailgate real people from all over the world. I'll deal with the TRIP first.
Meet the cast
As mentioned above, you play Groove Champion, son of a four times winner at
Daytona and a former Miss America though what a former Miss America was doing
racing at Daytona, I don't know. A pretty fair racing driver himself, Groove
was constantly outshone on the track by Jade. Guess that's one problem out of
the way.
To avenge his slaughtered sis, Groove has hooked up with two other dubious characters.
Taurus was a poet until his family was killed by criminals and he's not afraid
to prove it. Press the poem key during a mission and he'll sling a stanza more
lethal than any missile at you. Not a dude to mess with.
Skeeter is that hackneyed character the idiot who's a genius with machinery. He's responsible for keeping Taurus' and Groove's vehicles on the road. Gives two short planks a bad name.
Antonio Malochio. The villain of the piece. A Vietnam veteran who liked it over there, he is responsible for Jade heading for that great pit lane in the sky as well as being up to something big and nasty. He must be stopped. Wears a pin striped suit so sharp it counts as a dangerous weapon in 48 states.
You dirty sister, you killed my rat! No, hold on a minute...
The best my meager imagination can come up with when trying to describe the
TRIP is Wing Commander on wheels. You play the part of Groove and progress through
a series of missions connected by cut scenes to move the story along. The story
itself seems to be completely on rails, that is there's only one story-line
and nothing the player does during the missions changes it. Indeed if the player
fails to meet the objectives of the mission, the only alternative open to them
is to replay it. All of the above is subject to the caveat that I have not played
my way to the end of the TRIP. Perhaps an element of choice creeps in later
but I doubt it.
Games of the Wing Commander type have two pitfalls they must hurdle across.
The story and the cut scenes which depict it must be done well enough to make
the player want to find out what happens next and the difficulty of the mission
element must be finely judged so that reaching the next part of the story offers
a challenge whilst not being impossible. Thankfully, Interstate '76 comes up
trumps in both areas.
What kind of things will you find yourself doing in a typical TRIP mission? The early ones are a kind of training course for the would be auto-vigilante, you have to prove yourself worthy by racing your sidekick Taurus, killing a few baddies driving souped up C5s with flat batteries and flattening a couple of buildings being used by the baddies. Simple stuff in other words. Things soon toughen up though and before you know it you will be defending the local burger bar against the forces of evil (the thought of going without your favourite botulo-burger being obviously too much to bear) and desperately racing towards safety with every bad-ass for fifty miles around on your tail.
A quick glance at your notebook will always tell you what tasks still await completion in a mission and your faithful grease monkey Skeeter provides you with a map of each mission, apparently drawn on the wrapper of one of the aforementioned botulo-burgers. The quality of these maps is hardly likely to have the Ordinance Survey giving up the day job in despair but do at least provide some indication as to which direction you should be pointing in at any time. Thankfully, the game pauses when you look at the map or notebook.
In my opinion, the difficulties of the missions just about right. I think the best indication of this is that in a sample of all the people I know who have the game, everyone has got stuck for some time on at least one mission but for each person it's a different mission. There's one mission where you have to defend a warehouse against numerous bad guys. My friend Patrick wore an indentation in the wall next to his PC banging his head against it as he tried to beat this mission over the course of several nights. I on the other hand beat this mission at the first attempt (but had spent several evenings trying to get past the previous one which had posed no difficulty to Patrick whatsoever.
The only problem with the TRIP's missions is that there isn't enough of them. There are only 17 and the missions are not particularly long either. I would estimate that it should only take about 15 minutes at most to finish a mission (at least one of them can be finished in 15 seconds if you know what you're doing) and that doesn't really add up to value for money in my book. Inevitably, Activision are talking about add-on disks containing more missions but I don't imagine that they'll be giving them away for free.
In one respect, it's just as well that the missions are so short because you can only save your progress between missions.
Though you rarely see him during the missions, Skeeter follows close behind you cannibalising your kills for any spare parts that may have survived the inferno of lead you have directed at them and this adds something of a strategic aspect to Interstate '76. Skeeter's van can't carry everything so at the end of each mission you are presented with a form which allows you to choose what to carry and what to discard. Is it better to pick up that severely damaged flame-thrower or hang onto the lightly dinged 50 cal. machine gun? Here, you can also set up what Skeeter is going to repair during your next mission. How he does all these repairs and manages to gut your kills at the same time isn't explained. The poor bugger probably doesn't get any sleep which come to think on it probably explains why he appears to have the intellect of a stunted tadpole.
Curiously, Skeeter never seems to have any problem finding ammo for any of your weapons, even the high velocity guided missiles. Those petrol stations you occasionally pass on the road must be better stocked than they look.
This need for salvage leads to one of the more stylish aspects of Interstate '76 style combat. Once your opponent is badly damaged, the best plan is to draw up beside them and blast away with your faithful .45 cal. handgun until the sound of the enemy horn informs you that you've nailed your foe and they have slumped across the steeringwheel. Why should you go through this rigmarole? Well you see, a car killed off in this manner yields up a lot more salvage than one killed by more orthodox means. There is one problem though. While blasting away out of the side window, you can't actually see where you're going and it is all to easy to run straight over the side of a cliff as I have found to my cost.
Skeeter's chores set, you can choose which weapons of death you are going to affix to your buggy for the next mission and off you go! If by some awful mischance you find that you have failed a mission and are having to replay it, you are offered the option of rethinking your weaponry.
Ok so I'll have a M1A1 main battle tank and you can have a skateboard armed
with a peashooter
Should you have finished the TRIP, there's still mileage to be had out of Interstate
'76. As well as the TRIP there is a melee option which comes with 7 preset scenarios
similar to the missions the player will encounter during the TRIP and the option
to set up a conflict on any of several locations versus a varying number of
enemies. The player has complete freedom over the equipment which each contestant
in the combat will be equipped with.
Should the computer driven cars not provide enough of a challenge, the only
option left is to find some friends and go head to head. Interstate '76 supports
head to head play over a modem or serial link, up to eight players over a local
area network and allows players to connect to one of several dedicated servers
that Activision has set up and do battle.
Brooom! Brooom! Bang!
Combat is real laugh. Your family runabout comes with a few extras Ford never
thought of bolting onto the Escort such as 5 mounting points for an assortment
of lethal devices, a radar scanner and armour plating. Optional extras not included
in the basic price include Nitrous Oxide injection, extra powerful brakes and
mud flaps (I kid you not). Weapons can be selected with the flick of a switch
and similar weapons (two machine guns, two cannons etc) can be linked so that
they both fire together. More sophisticated cars will also sport such nifty
items as radar jammers and heat seeking missiles (eek!).
With the foe locked up on your radar, it's decision time. Should you head straight
for the masses (for you are inevitably outnumbered) blazing away with your front
mounted weaponry or should you run for it dropping mines, oil or large bricks
as you go and generously warming up your target's tyres with your rear mounted
flame thrower, denting his paintwork with your machine gun or spoiling his whole
day with that huge rocket you were keeping back for a rainy day?
The combat sequences actually work really well. It is all too easy to become fixated on an enemy and absentmindedly drive off the road whereupon the car will start shaking like crazy and the damage to your chassis will multiply dramatically. Bucketing about over the rough desert surface makes your car difficult to handle and increases the difficulty of getting the opposition in your sights. Still, the opposition have the same problem.
I have some minor reservations about the fighting qualities of the enemy. The tactics they have employed so far have not been of the highest quality and I have found that I can fairly easily see off two or three of them at a time in a combat situation. They don't seem to make much effort to get onto your tail (though given the fact that the tail of most cars in Interstate '76 bristles with machine guns, flame throwers or mine droppers, this may not be so daft after all) and they don't work as a team when they outnumber you.
Four wheels on my wagon
Activision have made big thing of the driving model and physics in Interstate
'76 but I must admit that I remain slightly unconvinced. It seems to me that
your car sticks to the road slightly too well and it's harder to make it spin
off than it should be. The physics of the jumps and the like also didn't quite
gel. It's difficult to put my finger on just what's wrong, its like although
the graphics depict a wide range of inclines and drops, they are not treated
as such by the part of the program which handles the physics.
There is a very good reason why the reader might wish to take much of the above
with a pinch of salt. Until Interstate '76 came out I had been spending all
my spare time playing the demo of Carmageddon, a game which in my humble opinion
has near perfect car handling and physics. After that, anything was going to
be a disappointment. Download the Carmageddon demo yourself and see what I mean.
The cars in Interstate '76 are apparently all based on real life 70's cars with the names changed to prevent hoards of lawyers getting involuntary contributions towards their next Porche from any litigation that might have occurred had the real names been used.
Never having had much interest in over-sprung over-engined American barges, I can't vouch for this myself nor offer any suggestions as to what the original inspirations might have been. Had the game seen you driving a tooled up Austin Allegro estate whilst fending off the attentions of evil doers in tricked out Morris Marinas and Reliant Robins, things might have been different.
Why its beautiful!
All the characters in the game are portrayed using polygons which tends to give
them a somewhat craggy appearance. The presentation of the cut scenes (and indeed
the whole game) is excellent and really gives the player the impression that
they are watching a movie. Actually, that isn't quite correct. There's no doubt
that what the authors of Interstate '76 are trying to recreate is the feel of
all those really terrible 70's TV programs such as Charlie's Angels, Starsky
and Hutch and the Dukes of Hazzard and the point is driven home by the stunningly
tacky opening sequence to the game which had me laughing with glee even as I
cringed internally with the knowledge that I had watched real life programs
like this.
As I said above, the GDR is a responsible publication and so I feel that it
is my responsibility to warn concerned parents about letting their sensitive
offspring near this game. I'm not talking about the crys of "Oh shit!"
with which your alter-ego Groove greets any damage to his car during the missions.
Such and worse can be heard in any school playground in the country. Nor am
I talking about the occasional splashes of gore which can be seen in the cut
scenes, especially the opening one which depicts Jade's demise and incidently
explains why Groove's car isn't equipped with airbags; given Jade's statuesque
proportions as revealed by her fetching light blue halter top trouser suit,
they would have been quite surplus to requirements. No, what I want to warn
parents about is the danger of exposing the delicate minds of their offspring
to the selection of 70's fashion depicted with deadly accuracy in the cut scenes.
I really have to hand it to the graphics artists on this game, I would never
have believed that an afro or a pair of killer sideburns could have been depicted
with such style using only a couple of polygons.
Ask yourself. As a parent, what would you answer when asked by your innocent sprogs "Mummy ( or daddy, delete as appropriate) did people really wear clothes like that in the old days?" What do you do? Do you tell them the truth and shatter their belief in the innate goodness of mankind or do you pass off these killer threads as merely the fevered imaginings of a demented games designer and leave them to discover the ghastly truth later? Not a choice I would like to make.
Anyway, as I was saying, the cut scenes are very well done featuring stylish graphics and good voice acting. There are actually two types of cut scene, those featuring the characters which are obviously pre-rendered and those involving only vehicles which seem to be produced by the graphics engine used for the combat part of the game. These cut in when a vehicular stunt of some merit is carried out such as jumping over one of the many collapsed bridges which which the landscape is littered. At first I though these were pre-rendered too, such is the quality of the graphics but after sadly misjudging my speed at one such jump and getting a nice cut scene of my car flattening itself against the cliff beneath the bridge, I decided that these scenes must be produced on the fly.
It would have been all too easy for Activision to concentrate on the flashy parts of the game such as the cut scenes and to have got the combat section wrong but thankfully this has not happened. Instead they have done a fine job of modelling automotive mayhem on the computer screen as can be seen by the fact that this portion can stand alone both in solo and online play.
The engine is said to have it's roots in the one used for the Mechwarrior II series of games but it must have had a hell of a lot of work done on it because I never saw Mechwarrior II looking this good. The desert landscape is perhaps one of the easier to portray realistically but it has seldom looked as good as it does in Interstate '76. Like the cutscenes, the scenery is somewhat angular showing up the polygons which make up the landscape under the usual slew of concealing textures but this is hardly noticeable even when your car is stopped and will certainly escape your notice when you are bucketing over undulating terrain at 100MPH trying to escape the attentions of the Sunday driver behind you with the large flamethrower.
One slight gripe I have about the graphics is that sometimes you have to get quite close before the true nature of the terrain becomes apparent. Several times I have been searching for a gentle slope which would let me get back onto the tarmac after falling into a gorge and have raced towards a likely looking spot only to have it turn into a sheer cliff at the last moment. The distance at which the terrain is drawn, along with many other options can be adjusted to produce an acceptable frame rate.
To be honest, this is just as well because such graphical magnificence uses up a lot of CPU power and though the game offers a variety of resolutions ranging from 1024x 748 to that old favourite 320x200, the manual doesn't even dare to speculate as to what kind of machine would run at a decent rate at anything over 640x480. Support for 3d cards is promised to be coming and that should improve things dramatically. To give you an idea of the horse power required, Interstate '76 just about runs satisfactorily at 640x480 with everything switched on on my P200 with 16M of ram. Even on my mighty machine the gameplay is plagued by momentary pauses. These are especially noticeable at the start of missions and are caused I suspect by the game caching stuff from the CD onto the 40M of disk space the program warns you it will need if you have less than 32M of memory. An upgrade to 32M might speed up things considerably I suspect.
Even the installation sequence is well presented featuring as it does backgrounds based what I presume were preliminary design sketches for the game and a radio broadcast which fills the player in with some of the background detail to the game. One thing which may cause a sharp intake of breath for some players is the disk requirements for the game. A minimum install takes up 80M, a recommended install 110M and, as mentioned above, on top of that you have to allow for 40M to be used as swap space if you have less than 32M of memory installed. Phew!
What is that crazy groove funk sound?
I did something with Interstate '76's CD which I have never done with a game
CD before. I stuck it into the CD drive of my HiFi so that I could listen to
the game music in the comfort of my own living room. Unfortunately I chose to
do this on a day when my dear wife had taken to her bed suffering from a headache
and nausea entirely unconnected with the amount of red wine she had drunk the
previous night and the pounding bass line of the various masterpieces on the
CD soon had her erupting from her bed of pain and issuing threats about divorce
courts and the like. Still it was worth it.
The music in Interstate '76 is so good it's terrible. Or to put it another way,
it's so bad it's great. Confused? Let me explain. The music sounds like it has
been created in some fell sound studio, no doubt located in the lowest bowels
of hell, by taking the theme and background music from every dreadful 70's TV
show imaginable, mixing them all together and decanting the ensuing mess onto
CD. It is therefore just as bad as its source material but it is extremely well
done. Look, don't ask me why I like it, some people collect snakes or scorpions.
The rest of the sound effects are equally well done, the sound effects being satisfactorily meaty, and the voice acting being particularly worthy of praise, apart that is from one truly dreadful attempt at a Scottish accent. Skeeter especially is excellent, every time he speaks, you can tell that he has less functioning brain cells than Groove has cylinders under his bonnet, sorry hood.
What's this strange thing in the box? It seems to be made out of paper...
Interstate '76 is a Windows95 game so we all know what that means right? On-line
help and another forest saved. Well just for once, opening the box produces
a pleasant surprise. Not only does Interstate '76 come with a 68 page manual,
it's a good one combining helpful advise and illustrations about gameplay under
the guise of the Auto Vigilante Guide compendium for 1976. Want to know the
range of that EZKill Mortar or the speed of the AIM-Nein missile? It's all in
there. The package also comes with a key guide and even the online help is useful.
What's this car wars everyone's talking about?
When I was a young undergraduate, I spent far too much of my time playing a
board game called Car Wars by Steve Jackson Games. This is a gaming system which
allows players to design heavily armed and armoured vehicles and fight their
friends over an arena drawn on squared paper. Over the years the system has
been expanded to include such delights as helicopters, boats and off-road vehicles.
It's a great game though the amount of paperwork associated with playing it
may put off today's game players softened as they are by the ease of playing
games on the computer.
There have been other computer games before now which have attempted to simulate
car based combat but for me, none of them have come as close as Interstate '76
does to capturing the essential flavour of Car Wars. Of course Interstate '76
isn't so detailed in the design of its vehicles, nor is there enough difference
between the different types of vehicles but I don't think Car Wars veterans
who give Interstate '76 a try will be disappointed. It's certainly given me
a desire to dig out my copy of Uncle Albert's and hit those square grid streets
again.
Bugs and moans
There's a patch out which addresses some problems with Interstate '76, mostly
concerned with multiplayer play. Unfortunately, this patch did nothing to correct
the one problem I encountered with the game while trying to set up two machines
with a null modem link. My machine worked fine but on the other machine Interstate
'76 continually locked up when it tried to make contact with my machine. I haven't
seen this problem reported anywhere else so it may have been a glitch specific
to this one machine. Apart from that, I didn't encounter any problems with Interstate
'76.
Conclusions
To be honest with you, I bought Interstate '76 as a means of passing the long
weary hours until such time as Carmageddon should appear on my local software
retailers top shelf. I am really glad I did though because Interstate '76 is
a truly excellent release, full of style (even if it is a gruesome 70's style),
with a gripping storyline, excellent multiplayer and melee options and all those
little additional touches which raise a game from the good to the truly great.
Why then am I only giving it a silver award? Well, for a game to be worthy of
a GDR gold it has to excel in every aspect of presentation and gameplay and
for me, a total of 24 missions, 7 of which are auto-melee scenarios just isn't
enough. People may point out that the auto-melee, online and head to head combat
options more than compensate for the shortness of the TRIP but the online options
are small compensation for those gamers (including myself) who don't own a modem.
I look forward to any add-ons for the game Activision may choose to publish.
If you can overlook the lack of missions, Interstate '76 is more than worthy of a place on your hard disk. Being a child of the seventies myself (and thankfully only a child, there are no incriminating pictures of me in foot wide flares, medallion the size of a dustbin lid, sideburns extending to my armpits and hair closely modelled on the item usually found next to the toilet seat to clear those unpleasant skid marks, waiting to destroy my current reputation for quiet good taste. Now Patrick though...), I've seen the TV programs, heard the music and so the whole affair has a nostalgic angle to it. Members of the Nintendo generation who came along too late to experience this stuff at first hand will not get this nostalgic glow but should still check out the game as a reminder as to just how silly humanity can make itself look. Chastening isn't it?
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