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Put on your Jnco jeans and strap on your wallet chains, because it’s the late ‘90s all over again – at least on my Xbox, anyway.
Back when the original PlayStation came out, some of the more heavily played games focused on vehicular combat, where you would take charge of a tricked-out ride and blow your other dorm dwellers to smithereens with missiles and machine guns. Maybe it’s just me reminiscing, but I spent I recall spending an inordinate amount of time with the Twisted Metal and Vigilante 8 series instead of studying for my third world history class. Most of that was spent swearing and tossing controllers at my friends who were better than I was, though. Since then, the genre pretty much disappeared.
Developer Activision has brought the Vigilante 8 series back for the Xbox 360 with Vigilante 8: Arcade, available through the Xbox Live Arcade for 800 Microsoft points (about $10). In terms of gameplay, not much has changed since the original was released in 1998, save for the vastly updated graphics. You choose a car – which does have a goofy character associated with it – and ride off into the sunset, annihilating anyone else that gets in your way. You start off with just machine guns and accumulate additional weapons that spawn on the level at regular intervals. You win if you’re the last man/woman standing.
At least that’s the idea. Maybe I’m rusty, but my two biggest complaints about the game are that the controls felt a bit sloppy – just tapping the stick slightly is enough to send you veering off target, sometimes wildly – and that it take a lot of damage, and time, to eliminate other players. The AI seemed a little wonky, too, and each time I played against the computer, it felt like all the other cars were ganging up on me rather than being in the midst of a free-for-all. It took a good five or six matches before I notched my first kill.
Vigilante 8 does support online play through Xbox Live, but be forewarned that it can take a while to get a full game going. The online population for the game is a bit sparse, but if you can get a match going – with up to eight people - it’s great fun.
One of the best things Vigilante 8 has going for it is the nostalgia factor. It still supports the ‘70s theme – though there’s something weird about blowing up cars to disco music, but I guess it makes sense when the other car is a dune buggy – the game is known for and overall doesn’t feel all that different from previous iterations. But I’m going to guess that if you missed the first go-round with games like this you’re not likely to have as much fun with this one.
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