The Dominator reviews
Test Drive Off-Road
Distributed by
Eidos Interactive Limited
Price: £44.99
System Requirements :
MS DOS 5.0 (or higher) or Windows 95
Pentium PC 90 Mhz
12Mb RAM
50Mb Hard Drive Space
Dual-speed CD-ROM Drive
Soundblaster and 100% Soundblaster compatible sound cards
Modem and Network game support
Test Drive Off-Road Hummer, Land Rover
Defender 90, Jeep Wrangler, and Chevy K-1500 Z-71 , and race them
along 12 courses in 3 different environments (Forest, Desert or Snow),
accompanied by the realistic sounds of the engine, plus grinding rock music
from Gravity Kills .
Installation
The game can be installed in both DOS and Windows 95, and whichever environment
you choose to install it in, you can run it from either. Installation is simple,
and can be easily followed from the instruction manual including how to set
your soundcard correctly. If you install from within Windows 95, then
uninstalling is a quick affair by using the uninstall button. If you've
installed it in DOS, then you'll need to delete the files by hand, but this
is easily done by deleting the entire TDOR directory, or whatever name you have
chosen to call it.
Main Menu
Practice Race
Before you get started, you may want to have practice run around each of the
first six tracks. After entering your name, you can select your 4x4, as well
as a number of different paint jobs tailored to each different type of 4x4.
The next screen allows you to select which track you want to race round, as well
as the number of laps required. A further six tracks are available when
competing in and winning various Mixed Leagues.
When each race is done, if you've switched on the Action Replay function
you can replay the entire race, and choose whether to save it.
Mixed League
In this mode you'll be in a tournament competing against 23 other competitors,
but in six races of four vehicles at a time. Any vehicle can be chosen, and
you'll be racing against a selection of other vehicles.
The first of the trophies is the "King of the Mountain" one. You'll need to
finish in the top three in the first three races, and the top two in the last
three races, if you're to qualify for competing for the next trophy.
For the "King of the Mountain" trophy, you'll race the first six tracks
in random order. 3 laps for the first two races, 4 laps for the next two, and
5 laps for the last two. Upon completion, you'll have access to track 7 in
the practice mode, and when you start the next trophy, "Speed Demon" ,
you will be racing along the 7th track along with any 5 of the first six tracks.
Similarly, as you progress through the trophies, you will gain access to
another track, with the other 5 tracks being taken at random from the previous
tracks already completed.
The scoring system is thus :
1st place - 10 points
2nd place - 8 points
3rd place - 4 points
4th place - 1 point
Class League
In this league, you're also racing against 23 other vehicles, each round
consisting of six races with four vehicles in each race. This time, however,
the leagure is Vehicle-specific. You can choose from: Hummer League, Jeep
League, Land Rover League and Chevrolet League .
Again you can choose your vehicle's colour scheme before moving onto the random
track selection. The number of tracks that six will be picked from is dependent
on the number completed during the Mixed League races. On completion
of 1 to 6 Mixed League races, you'll have 7 to 12 (respectively) tracks to pick
from. As in the Mixed League, you'll race 3 laps for the first two races, 4 laps
for the next two, and 5 laps for the last two.
The scoring system remains the same as the Mixed League.
Bonus Vehicles
You will access and drive four bonus vehicles, providing you win the Class
Leagues on either the Medium or Hard difficulty settings, each league giving
you access to a specific bonus vehicle, thus :
Win Hummer League : Access Monster Truck
Win Jeep League : Access Stock Car
Win Land Rover League : Access 4x4 Buggy
Win Chevrolet League : Access Hot Rod
NB. The bonus vehicles are only available in practice mode.
Racing
When driving during the game, the controls are simple - accelerate, brake
and turn, with an optional small map showing the positions of yourself and your
opponents on the track.
When choosing a camera angle, some people prefer a first-person view (keys 0
and 1) or third-person (2-9). Number 6 worked best for me as a third-person
view with the camera positioned above the car with enough space to see the
track and the other cars.
You must go over the checkpoints as you drive around, otherwise a voice will
tell you that you need to go back over it and that'll cost you
The figure in the bottom-right corner of the screen is your race position
(1 to 4). You can try to smack into other vehicles to roll them over, but you
run the risk of rolling over yourself, and if you do roll, you'll probably lose.
Options
There is a numerous supply of options in this game.
1. Sound FX
Gravity Kills .
2. Graphics
Action Replay, Onscreen Map,
Race Info (speed, time elapsed, lap counter), Sky animation, Dust animation,
Player names above each car .
3. Display
Screen Mode : VGA, SVGA or ModeX
Draw Distance : The distance the horizon is drawn from the car
Texture Distance : The distance from the car where textures are drawn on
the road.
Camera : A choice of ten camera angles (0-9 on the keypad). For 2-player
games 0-4 choose the camera for player one, and 5-9 go for player two.
4. Control
5. Driver Setup
6. Load Replay
7. Hall of Fame
Graphics, Sound and Playability
As more and more games these days are using polygons for graphics, this one
uses sprites. I had the game set to VGA mode as my P90 isn't fast enough for
the SVGA setting. While the cars and tracks are well-designed, the on-track
graphics aren't a lot to shout about, being a mixture of various road-humps to
jump over, and a number of track-side elements to keep you going the right way
such as trees and oil drums. However, if you want, you can leave the track
itself to go exploring the terrain, although you're not going to win if you
do...
The sound quality is limited to various engine noises, and gear-change sounds
as you do a three point turn when you've inadvertantly gone off the track. Don't
worry, you don't have to get involved in actually changing gears, but the
crunch as you turn is a nice bonus.
There's also a number of speech phrases in the game with an American bloke
telling you to "Hurry Up!" when you're lagging behind, "Turn Around!" when
you're not facing the right up, "Awesome!" as you go over a big hump, and he
enthuses "We're jammin' now!" when you're going at top speed.
The rock soundtrack is courtesy of the group Gravity Kills, and you can choose
whether to hear a particular track all the way through the game, random tracks,
or the tracks preset to accompany certain tracks.
The playability of the game is what's most important, and the game certainly
manages to get the cars moving along the tracks at an impressive rate. The game
is also very easy to get into with a wide variety of options available.
Overall
Overall, this is a competent above-average rally game, which also has built-in
support for modem and network games. In comparison with some recent other
games, Test Drive Off-Road has more tracks than Screamer 2 , but
the graphics aren't as smooth as the latter uses polygons.
The recent Carmageddon also uses polygons, but the effective speed of
the cars feels about the same at times, even though the car in Carmageddon is
meant to reach over 200 MPH. Also, it depends whether you're more into playing
a straight racing game such as this, or Carmageddon's more violent style of
increasing your time left by running people over.
Graphics : 3/5
Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 1997.
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