Vigilante 8: Arcade

Towards the end of the nineties, vehicle based carnage games where destruction was the only real aim were everywhere, with Vigilante 8 being one of the few that remain in memory. The come back has arrived with the release of Vigilante 8: Arcade on the Xbox 360.

Despite being a popular title the first time around, the follow up Vigilante 8: Arcade has gone largely un-noticed during the months leading up to it’s release for some unknown reason. Perhaps it’s the fact that it’s developers have simply chosen not to push it to the front of everybody’s minds, which begs the question - why not?

The answer comes when you actually pick up Vigilante 8: Arcade and begin to play it, because it takes very little time at all to realise this is not Vigilante 8 as you remember it in any way, shape or form. With this release, gone are the days where it can be considered a genre leader up there with the likes of Twisted Metal, which by the way I would love to see a new instalment of and I am sure that I am not the only one.

Vigilante 8: Arcade is so bad in fact that it will tarnish the happy memories you held so dearly of the original Vigilante 8 title all those years ago - a series reputation in tatters, ruined, and possibly never to be restored after this failure of such grand proportions.

It goes without saying that Vigilante 8: Arcade does have one good thing about it, and that is much improved graphics over the original - but given the technology gap at the times of their respective release dates, something would have been drastically wrong if today’s version did not have far better visuals than it’s predecessor - and despite being good, they are by no means anything special so with all things considered, the graphics in Vigilante 8: Arcade can be seen as a bad thing rather than a good one.

Another bad thing is the complete lack of a story line behind the game. You might wonder what use a story line would be in a title like this where you simply take a car, van, truck or some other vehicle for a spin around large deserted landscapes with the sole intention of battering your opponents - but believe it or not, something of a story line would have added so much to Vigilante 8: Arcade, because it has very little to it without one. When I say there is a complete lack of a story, I am lying. Before each so called ‘level’ there is a short paragraph of text, which is for some reason full of old day slang that the target audience of this game will probably find hard to make any sense of.

The choice of vehicles is not too bad, as you are able to jump behind the wheel of everything from small standard hatchback cars that you see on the street outside you through to a big bulky prison escort bus - and pretty much anything conceivably sitting between the two. When it comes to driving them though you feel let down, as whatever vehicle you choose the control of it will feel and act very much the same which gives your choice of vehicle ultimately pointless. As before, each vehicle is pimped up throughout and given the added ability of carrying some nasty weapons with which to take out your opponents.

Vigilante 8: Arcade offers a few multiplayer modes, so when you are fed up of playing against the computer controlled opponents - which will not take very long - you can head online and go up against some real people instead. Lag, as ever with titles that run at any kind of pace, is a constantly nagging issue but if you are lucky enough to get a good connection established between you and the other players then playing online actually proves to be a lot of fun. Such luck is rare, though.

Vigilante 8: Arcade is not a must buy however much you may have loved the original game in the series. Despite the huge advance in technology since the release of the original, I would go as far to say you would be better off buying a PS One and the original than grabbing this one for your Xbox 360 - strange, but true. Do not buy it!