In this game you play the role of Tanner, a former racer now an undercover cop sent to investigate the Castaldi family, a really shady organisation.
To start the game you’re tasked with showing how good of a driver you are in one of the most difficult opening levels of any game I have ever played. You have to complete various driving manoeuvres in an underground car park. Which is very difficult due to the exaggerated physics of the car. This took far too long for me to complete both this time, and when I played this many years ago.
The missions are quite repetitive in this game, go here, pick up some guys or drop some guys off, then get out of there and lose the cops, who will stop at nothing in their pursuit to bring you in. The repetitiveness is occasionally broken up by the most enjoyable missions in the game, where you need to ram a moving car to destruction.
The in-game graphics look OK for the Ps1, even today, however the very short draw distance cheapens the experience somewhat but maybe I am holding this up to the games of today so it’s not that big of a deal. The cut scenes look laughable, the characters are all very stiff and the developers clearly didn’t put much effort into them. The music here while repetitive is quite enjoyable the first few times you hear it, with various funky tunes straight out of the 70s that go extremely well with this game.
The AI in this game is insane, the other cars on the road will pull out in front of you, sometimes it really feels like they do this on purpose, and the police will constantly ram the hell out of you. I’m not going to lie, I swore a lot at the TV because of this.
Overall the game shines because of its concept and gameplay and if you can get past the poor graphics then you will have a fantastic and frustrating time with this game. 7/10