Red Asphalt: Rock N Roll Racing 2

for Sony Playstation

Distributed by
Interplay

Price: £44.99

Players : 1 (or 2 with link-up cable)

Red Asphalt: Rock & Roll Racing 2 is a racing combat game, and a combination of racing and weapon skills is required to progress to the final showdown in the Arena of Death against Draenek.

Starting The Game

The main menu presents you with a number of options such as the choice of Characters, Cars, Equipment and the type of Race you want to play, be it a regular race or a time trial. You can also move to the Next World from here if you have the requisite number of Chaos Points.

Playing the Game

The aim of the game is to drive round the tracks, and depending on how you perform you'll get Chaos Points, Cash and Experience Points. The Chaos Points determine whether or not the IRC (Intergalactic Race Council) allow you to advance through the circuit. There are five different Worlds including the Arena of Death, and you need 2 million Chaos Points per world to move between them. Any cash earned during the race can be used to upgrade your car or to buy a new one, and experience points will upgrade your character's abilities.

A 1st, 2nd or 3rd placing is necessary to gain chaos and experience points, and if you haven't accumulated enough chaos points by the end of the sixth race of any given world, you'll have to start again on the first race, and you'll lose all your winnings too.

Each world has a boss, all of which are Draenek's puppets, who is hard to beat, but the numerous power-ups which are available to you should help. When you do come up against Draenek, you'll only get one chance to blow him away...

Characters

Each of the six characters (Motormouth, Thula Crimstone, Jackal, Junkyard, Hiroki, and Handsome Jack Bloodwheel) have three abilities - Driving (affects how well you turn and your top speed), Tactical (affects how well you lock-on to your oppoonent's vehicle), and Aggression (affects how much damage you do with your weapons).

Cars

Of the six vehicles available (Bomback, Tigershark, Aztek, Hellfalcon, Tormento and Nightmare) you can only afford two to begin with, but the more cash you earn during the races, the better a car you can upgrade to later.

Power-ups

The power-ups available to you are placed at various points around the track, and you only need to drive through them to pick them up. These range from Cash, Armour, Shield and a Nitro Boost to excellent additions such as Dark Matter which makes your car appear transparent so bullets go through you, Super-Shot which gives you plenty more firepower, and White Dwarf which makes your car glow white and one touch by anyone else will kill them.

Graphics, Sound and Playability

The tracks and the cars are quite well detailed, and give the whole thing a Wipeout-type feel, but don't have the same high level of quality, instead aiming more for the gameplay stakes so that everything shifts round at a frenetic place.

The sound also score mid-points, although it's quite a lot of fun as the bullets sound off while you blow the crap out of your opponents.

Overall

Overall, the game is a lot of fun to play as you have a good choice of cars and characters available, but it's not quite as good as, say, Wipeout 2097 which has slicker graphics and sound, but given that that game came out around a year ago and most gamers will already have bought it, it's now time to make room for another racing game in the form of Red Asphalt: Rock & Roll Racing 2.

GRAPHICS 		: ***
SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC	: ***
PLAYABILITY		: ***
ORIGINALITY 		: **
ENJOYMENT 		: ****
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OVERALL 		: ***