Game Over Online ~ Micro Machines V3

GameOver Game Reviews - Micro Machines V3 (c) CodeMasters, Reviewed by - Ned

Game & Publisher Micro Machines V3 (c) CodeMasters
System Requirements Pentium Based System, 16mb RAM, 4x CD-ROM
Overall Rating 52%
Date Published Saturday, June 6th, 1998 at 09:55 PM


Divider Left By: Ned Divider Right

This game's series has been out longer than I've even used a computer. It retains the top-down, racer view from the previous installments of Micro Machines with all of the inherent features of such a design. The game supports single, multi, time challenge, and a few other such modes of play. I saw about 6 "areas" to play in with about 5 tracks for each type of area so perhaps 30 tracks in all.

This game has 3d luckily, which helps out somewhat with speed and image quality. If anything, the game runs too fast although I'm not sure if that's a property of having voodoo 2 or just by design. The tracks are sparse to say the least. One of the tracks lays out the suggested road with carrots and peas as guidelines but the carrots and peas are not solid polygonal objects. Instead they are flat textures laid on top of the flat racing surface. All of the tracks are totally flat without any hills or valleys to vary the terrain. This game has that simple, colorful game that you might expect from such a title but it's really too simple. For the amount of hardware the average gamer has these days, this game is very bare-bones. There aren't any lighting effects or weather effects and most things use simple gourad shading with some things being textured. The water level has pond ripples, but the detail is so low that you can see actual pixels in the ripples. The water level should have had waves and water spray from the boats but instead it just has a reflection map and a slight wave displacement at the back of the boats. The sandbox levels are again, flat and undetailed. To see a game that really does the graphics right, check out Ignition, which came out about 6 months ago. It has multiple levels, weather and intricate detail. MM3 is last years technology at best.

I can barely remember the ho-hum sound effects in Micro Machines 3. Nothing exciting or ground breaking here. The music is cheaply composed midi files. My soundcard has 8 megs of ram for midi samples but these sound like something from the soundblaster 16 era. Big snooze all around in the sound category.

This games "fun factor", did one major divebomb for me. Initially, I was quite entertained by this title, but after just a few tracks I could tell this had shovelware written all over it. I found the control way too touchy with a gamepad, which is odd since I would think that this would be the ideal way to play. The game is also really childish in fact and that alone will turn off most gamers. The graphics, although supporting 3D cards, are plain and lacking any attention to detail that other games exhibit these days. Even the menu system annoys me in this game. You go through 3 startup screens, a movie clip, and 5 setup screens just to race a track. I would really like it if games would lay off on the pre-game crap that they seem to feel is so necessary. Who cares who the maker is after the 50th time of starting a game? Just go straight to the game and let me play, that's what I want. If you want good top-down racing, get IGNITION.

 

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Rating
52%
 

 

 
 

 

 

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