Although Crystal Dynamics' previous action games - Crash 'n' Burn and Total Eclipse - showed off the 3DO's impressive texture-mapping abilities, both were found wanting in the gameplay department. So 3DO owners might be forgiven for approaching this particular offering with more than a little trepidation. But those fears could turn out to be unfounded because, in terms of both graphics and gameplay, Off World Interceptor looks exceptional.
Although Crystal Dynamics' previous action games - Crash 'n' Burn and Total Eclipse - showed off the 3DO's impressive texture-mapping abilities, both were found wanting in the gameplay department. So 3DO owners might be forgiven for approaching this particular offering
You play a trashman - a sort of bounty hunter - on a mission to rid the universe of fugitives, criminals, terrorists, and anyone else who cares to get in your way as you travel at speed over the game's harsh off-road landscape. On your travels you also encounter rival Trashmen not to mention Cash Cops, who try their best to make your exsistence a brutally short one. Your objective is to reach various `target points' take out bosses, and generally put an end to wrongdoing before someone puts an end to you.
By far the most dangerous aspect of OWI isn't the various forms of lowlife you come across, but the undulating alien terrain you have to traverse. These `courses' span nine different alien planets, with each one more hazardous than the last. Crystal Dynamics have used their in-house-developed DCMS - Dynamic Co-ordinating Mapping System to create realistic 3D hills, valleys, crevices and winding mountain roads, with great success. Many of the texture-mapped landscapes are a joy to watch - graphically, this is probably Crystal Dynamics' best effort yet.
Happily OWI moves as well as it looks, with superb animation and a healthy 3D update throughout. However, the most impressive aspect of the whole game is without doubt the vehicles themselves, which have independant suspension and behave just like real 4WD off-road vehicles, bumping and hopping over the treacherous terrain.
One of OWI's most entertaining features is the cars' antics when they hit a bump and leave the ground. Instead of just flying through the air and crunching into the texture-mapped landscape, these little machines take it upon themselves to perform acrobatic manoeuvres in mid-air before landing in catlike fashion on all four tyres.
This surefootedness inspires confidence in your car's abilities, and you start to explore the land you're supposed to be racing on. You experience a desire to see if your car can make it up that hugh moutain, or to text its capacity to survive a drop to the bottom of a canyon. And unlike Crystal Dynamics' other 3DO games, you're not restricted to a set path: you have total freedom to go where you want, when you want.
With OWI, Crystal Dynamics are also entering the simultaneous twoplayer field for the first time on 3DO. But instead of adopting the horizontal splitscreen format that has almost become a standard for this type of game, they've sacrificed width for height and chosen a slightly unconventional vertical split. Surprisingly, this works very well: both cars are fixed in the centre of the window, with the landscapes moving around them, so although the play area feels a bit cramped to begin with it manages to capture all of the action perfectly - the window scrolls up when a vehicle takes off on a ramp, for example. And, even more suprisingly, there's little trade-off in speed either.
OWI has the potential to become the 3DO eqivalent of Wildtrax on the SFC. Like Wildtrax, it offers a great oneplayer game, while also providing the twoplayer game that Wildtrax failed to deliver but that was Virtua Racing's principal virtue.
TYPED : 2TUFF
28TH JULY 1994
michel.buffa@cmu.edu