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Back when the PlayStation first hit the market, Psygnosis released a little game called WipeOut, which was the 32-bit era's answer to the classic Super Nintendo launch title F-Zero. Chock full of fast hovercraft racing on highly-stylized race tracks of the future, techno music and some of the best graphics the PlayStation had to offer, WipeOut was a bona-fide hit, and went on to spawn a highly successful series of sequels.
Now, the Dreamcast has a WipeOut of its own... at least in theory. I'll be brutally honest right up front and say that if you're a fan of the WipeOut series, you're not going to be too excited by what MagForce Racing has to offer. It's all been done before, and done better. If, however, you only know of the WipeOut games second-hand, or you played them on a friend's PlayStation and never had a copy of your own, then you might just be in for a treat. Maybe.
The Good
The locales are sometimes quite impressive.
Eye candy is always a good thing. Sure, you want your girlfriend (or boyfriend
as the case may be) to have intelligence, a sense of humor and a really sweet
demeanor. But you also want them to be Damned Good Looking (capitals required).
If MagForce Racing is anything, it's Damned Good Looking. Great textures, wonderful
lighting effects, an utter lack of fog, and a framerate that hovers around sixty
(even during multiplayer games) all add up to one beautiful game. This is what
Dreamcast racing games are supposed to look like: crisp and pretty. Sure, there's
a small amount of slowdown, but for the most part this game's graphics are ace.
The track layouts are nice, too. With different themes from Moscow to Mars,
the tracks all have good, distinct, personalities. One of my favorites is the
Hawaii track. The lush green mountainsides and winding surface recall the thrill
of Sonic Adventure's better moments. And in the Himalayas track, you'll suddenly
find yourself plummeting over the edge of a cliff, headed towards the rest of
the track a mile or so down. With each new track, the surprises keep coming.
The "Mag" in MagForce is short for "magnet". As you race
through the canals of Mars, or down the Needle Rock of Saturn, gravity will
be your worst enemy. Tracks twist and turn and go upside down at every opportunity.
Even on the tracks that stay mostly upright, there are extra power ups to be
collected by driving on the ceiling. There is a selection in the options screen
for "Magnet Help". This defaults to on, and is the best way to race
for the first day or two. With Magnet Help activated, your craft will automatically
turn on its magnets whenever the world does a flip flop. While it's a good way
to learn the game, you're really cheating yourself if you don't turn Magnet
Help off after a bit. That extra touch of skill required to use your magnets
at just the right time and keep from plummeting to your doom really adds to
the action.
Ooooh what a feeling, I'm racing on the... walls.
There's not much to be said about the controls, aside from the fact that they're good and solid. That's rather quick and to the point, but there just isn't much to say on the subject.
The multiplayer options come in two flavors: Classic and Arcade. Both have the same selection of tracks and cars (based on what you have managed to unlock in single player), but have two different sets of rules regarding powerups. In Classic, everything behaves as it does in single player. In Arcade, however, every few seconds the nature of power ups changes. One time you might get a powerup that is fully charged, so what would have been a simple missile is now a triple missile. Another time you may have limitless ammo for your laser beam, or your weapon may change every time it is used. You might even get a "cease fire" in which no power ups can be used at all. This really adds to the flavor of a multi-player race, since you never quite know what's coming next. It's an innovative little feature that would be interesting to see in other racing games.
The Bad
I actually feel bad speaking poorly of MagForce Racing. It's so close to being
a good game, but feels as if it was pushed out the door just a few weeks too
early. Every time I would start to really enjoy myself with it, some tiny little
thing that could have been easily fixed with some more development time would
pop up and deflate my excitement.
First and most noticeable is the game's odd championship structure. To a beginning
player, it's just confusing. After selecting your track from a main menu that's
a bit too stylized for its own good, you then race that track. After the race
you are offered two choices: Quit and Restart. My initial reaction upon seeing
these choices was "but I thought I got first place!" I raced again
and got first place by a mile, was sure of my victory and again saw the same
two choices. Upon selecting Quit and returning to the main menu, I discovered
that I had indeed claimed first place in the race. I now had to manually switch
to the next track. This seemed silly to me. I should at least have been given
confirmation in-game that I had won the race. A simple "You got 1st! Now
try another track!" text message would have cleared this all up.