I’m sure we’ve all heard of Twisted Metal, huh? Well, I’m also sure a few of you know a few knockoffs. Personally, there were two main ones I knew of: Rouge Trip 2012 and Vigilante 8. This is a discussion of the latter, although I will mention a few things about RT as well.

===Getting Ready===

I knew the jist of what I was getting into. It was a Car combat game. There’s not much else that could be said, and I didn’t have many expectations. However, when buying it, I was thinking to myself:

“I hope it’s better than Rogue Trip”.

Mind you, I don’t *hate* Rogue Trip. I just didn’t like it too much.

I read the manual to get a jist of game play and the weapons (although there’s nowhere in the manual that shows what the default controls are. It just points out you can remap controls in the options menu), and then popped the thing in.

TRIUMPH, OR DIE!

===Intro/Pre-game===

The intro shows 4 people in vehicles breaking into a warehouse (These being the Coyotes) and stealing weapons, only to see another group of 4 vehicles (the Vigilantes) come and attack. One of the members, outside her car, fires a bazooka, and takes out what I found out is the leader of the Vigilantes. And then, title screen. This game is pretty much one of those where the bulk of the plot is in the manual. [Insert link to TV Trope’s “It’s all there in the manual”]

The main menu starts up and I was treated to some funky 70’s styled music, and I later found out that’s when the game takes place. It’s a rather nice setup. The option menu even tells you what you unlock and what you need to do to unlock other stuff (there are 5 unlockable drivers and 2 unlockable stages, although only 4 drivers are hinted at). I won’t get into details about the options menu but I do rather like it. I’ll even go as far as say it’s my favorite option screen in any game ever.

===The game===

First I will get this off my chest: I’m glad the machinegun doesn’t suck. In the handful of car combat games I’ve played, I’ve come across 2 types of machineguns: The infinite one that’s prone to overheating, or the infinite one that sucks. V8 features the former, although with a good rhythm I don’t have to worry much about overheating. Don’t get me wrong, the machinegun is a weak weapon, but at the very least it’s a useful weak weapon (in short, being weak without being unfeasibly weak). And I can, will, and have killed the occasional enemy with just the machinegun, or at least whittled down a lot of health.

Second, I’m glad the music doesn’t suck. Because I didn’t like Rogue Trips music much. Although my favorite tunes aren’t even the 70’s styled beats, overall it’s a nice soundtrack to blow crap up with.

The plot… isn’t that great, but it works to set the setting. It all boils down to the two groups fighting each other, and both managing to get a bunch of military weapons in the process of one fight.

The game has a Quest mode that is, compared to other games 1P mode in the same genre, rather simple and quick to beat. Each one is comprised of 4 stages, which means unlocking stuff doesn’t take long. It took me the span of 2 days just to unlock everything. And after you beat the characters quest you’re treated to an ending, all of which are rather short, and some didn’t make sense until later on. Huston, a female cyborg character who was part of the Coyotes against her will takes out the microchip controlling her and smashes in front of someone. I initially thought it was a member of the Coyotes, but I later found out it was the Vigilante’s leader, and it was Huston apparently joining the Vigilantes. Another ending has another character, Slick Clide, take a wizz in a gas station bathroom, see some sort of metallic wrist band, puts it on, and gets charged with electricity before a newspaper transition declares him the new leader of the Coyotes, although I don’t have much of an idea where that wrist band came from. My only guess is that it was Huston’s, but I don’t see how it supercharged him.
Alright, enough with the endings, let’s talk about the essence of car combat games: the weapons.

Of course there’s the weapons that are, to me, not too useful, and the weapons that I love. But for the ones I love, I really love. The only weapon(s) I don’t like are the mines, and that’s only because I don’t like mines in many games.

All the weapons in the game have to be collected, even special weapons (unlike Twisted Metal where you start with them and you have to wait to get more ammo for it). This means that essentially you can stock up on a lot of a character’s special weapon. Most aren’t super deadly, and many have some sort of secondary use (Slick Clyde’s can stall enemies, while Huston’s Super Fantastic Death Ray 3-Ax (real name) can knock power ups off).

Also, all the normal weapons (5 total) have 3 firing modes; most are offensive, while a few aren’t. Personally, I love shooting someone with the missile’s “Road Runner” firing mode to cause an enemy to lose control of their car while a rocket pushes them, and use the cannon’s “Cow Puncher” firing mode to blast them away and into the air. Sometimes into buildings. And man was it fun that one time I Cow Punched a truck into a couple buildings and made them explode.

Beautiful.

And that’s why I love this game… it’s just fun! I’ve had more fun with it than Twisted Metal and Rogue Trip (although TM2 is really close.) The levels are generally a blast to play (the Oil Rigs were the only *meh* level for me), offers a lot of ways of blowing up the environment (if it’s not the ground, you can destroy it. Granted, one of the alternate fire modes of the Mortar can leave craters in normal ground for a little while), and features a colorful cast of characters (But what car combat game would be without a wacky cast?). My favorite is the spy Chassey Blue, because she has a good, well rounded car and I love her special weapon, Gridlock, which can cause cars to stall. And the way it works makes it essentially a shotgun, but with flares. Second to her is Huston 3 (I-MAY-BE-HALF-HU-MAN, but I’m all… woman.) Also I need to see if whoever did the robotic voice for Huston also did the “final boss” for Portal (I can’t remember its name. I’ve never played Portal).

So, it controls nice (I don’t have any actual problems with it, so why elaborate), rather colorful, fun, a good soundtrack, what’s not to like?

Well, sometimes a player can fail at physics, especially on the rare occasion where turning over in a crater can somehow launch you 100 feet in the air, but aside from that, a pretty solid game. Not bad for a team of 5 people working on a game. And admittedly the endings were a bit lacking (maybe I’m a bit spoiled by TM2’s endings.) There’s also the fact that Convoy is too tall, and any car immediately in front is blocked from view.

Also you can’t blow up the world like you could in Rogue Trip, but, hey, I’ll live with it.

Aside from that, there’s not much “bad” I could say about it.
If I were to rate it, I’d give it an 8-9. If you like car combat you should give this a try.

I’m also trying to incorporate the term “cow punching” in my vocabulary.