Interstate '76: Nitro Riders

After Watching Top Gear The Other night it's clear that the 'big car, small dick' theory still pervades with suburban road wariors; back in the '70s it was every American's duty to drive a car capacious enough to ferry the entire population of Lithuania.

Last year's Interstate '76 was all about big cars. Based in an apocalyptic future - but in the '70s - you wore the driving shoes of Groove Champion, a flared crusader out to avenge the death of your sister Jade. Essentially a missionbased driving game, cars were heavily armed, hair was plain heavy, and car stereos pumped out the funkiest music ever heard in a computer game. Interstate '76 had style, it was freakin' difficult, and on the average PC the graphics were jerkier than a teacup in an old dear's hand.

A game for Quentins

Set in a time previous to the original, Nitro Riders is more of the same, but this time round you get the chance to play as Jade (the sexy chick), Skeeter (who's a bit slow but good with spanners) or Taurus (who has big hair). Unlike last year's effort there are no 'scripted animated sequences', just dialogue. It works very well, and even though you only get to see the characters in the new intro it doesn't detract from the Tarantino feel of the game.

The new missions can be completed in any order, so you can quite happily jump between characters and missions if things are getting a bit difficult, and come back to them later. The flip side of this is that the story lacks narrative.

But that's not to say you're not given an incentive to progress. After a few missions of blowing up 'creepers' and escorting trucks, there is some semblance of an overall plot. Once you've completed the three main mission sets, you get to meet a new character who you can put through some extra missions. New terrains have also been incorporated, and fans of the multi-player game will find new vehicles and weapons, as well as capture the flag missions, deathmatches and races.

All right now

Nitro Riders thankfully builds on the graphical shortcomings of the original Interstate '76 by adding all sorts of 3D support. Anyone who played the previous release with the Direct3D patch we gave away last issue will know what to expect; if you don't have a 3D card you probably won't notice that much of an improvement, and even if you do there are still some obvious problems: shadows don't hang together too well and mountains continue to spring up from the middle distance. It's annoying, but it doesn't really matter too much because the game oozes style from every pixellated pore. For 20 quid it's perfect throwaway fun that should appeal to anyone with a fond appreciation of Starsky And Hutch.