Offroaders : Review By Daniel Simpson

Offroaders is an Isometric view, drifty style racer along similar lines to “Grand Prix Go” by the same developer TurboBoing.

The game opens with some great artwork of a confederate style, monster truck, that is featured in the game as an unlockable car. You hear some nice guitar music and you can jump straight into the game. You use the arrow keys to accelerate, steer and brake. You are pitted against seven other cars in a monster truck, two lap drift race.

The races are in the forms of circuits and each track has variation in obstacles, ramps, length, scenery and corners.

Things I loved:

You don’t have to look through pages of instructions explaining the rules and controls; you literally learn the controls when you start the first race. To some this will appear a negative and you may be thinking “they haven’t taken care of their players”, or “they’re not giving us the instructions…” but I can simply argue that the developers were simply getting us into the game faster rather than boring us silly. This mini feature felt right for the type of boredom busting “in a hurry” game it is.

When I saw the game was an Isometric racer; I was expecting a kind of badly made game where the car sprite, would rotate 30 degrees at a time. As I played I stood corrected, the car rotations looked smooth and the physics of the drifting, accurate. The physics were also used for airtime as on some ramps you can get hang time in the air and jump over your opponents. A PARTICULARLY fun feature for competing!

Instead of an upgrade system, this game has the great feature of actually buying cars which have custom upgrades and looks. What’s good is you are alerted when a car becomes available. Each car performs differently and looks much different. The car designs are done brilliantly. To be honest I was just expecting a few designs but with different colours. I feel bad for doubting them now as the car designs look great and are very distinguishable, from bright colours to interesting body designs, each car is unique and has it’s own style. The cars vary from a classic monster truck, to a wrecked looking car, to a General Lee style car with the confederate flag emblazoned on the top. My personal favourite has to be the General Lee look-alike, purely because I am a huge fan of the 80’s television series.  

The achievements are a nice touch and they all function well, I never felt I deserved an achievement which I didn’t get. The achievements were gained by winning races, leading laps and one that I liked in particular was the achievement for air time. The tip for getting this achievement is to enter a ramp, head on and at the apex of your boost. An airtime award for a flash driving game is something, I’ve never seen before, and so I was trying to get those awards.

I really do like this game because when I was a kid I really loved the game boy advance (and as a matter of fact I still do) I had a large game collection and a few had this same isometric mechanic. The only title I can actually remember is Cars (the movie game). Also the look and the graphics of the game were very much like the GBA’s general graphics.

This game is fun, and can be quite addictive and enjoyable for all age groups. I linked the game on social networking sites and emails, the response was good. I feel that especially the names of the cars can be fun for young kids. They reminded me of the names given to hot wheels cars.

What I did not like and suggested Improvements

The game does have very nice fluid game play and good looks  so I didn’t really find a lot of faults with this game. So I’ll mainly be listing some suggested Improvements.

I liked sharing this game with my friends, they all enjoy it, we would battle with the same car on the same track to get better scores but that’s all we could do. I understand that, yes it’s a single player boredom buster, but a two player mode would be nice whether it is done by spit screen or special type of single screen or an online mode. But I can also argue that building an online or two player mode may be too time consuming or just not work. I would love to see little in-game power ups, such as an instant boost, minus a few seconds of your time, so many pickups needed to unlock an achievement etc. I do get quite tired of seeing just the cash pickups in the turbo racing games. They have all had the same format and method of getting cash, the higher your position the more cash you win. I think that these methods are sound and a foundation of a good racer game, but the games have evolved, and so should their concepts. I would think that an achievement bonus (cash for achievements), or a mini game would be a good way of earning extra cash on the side.

Okay maybe a few negatives I loved Grand Prix Go and this game has so much better mechanics but the fact that there’s no qualifier mode did annoy me to say the least as these gave you a feel for the circuit before you started the race. I can forgive you for this as restarting is as simple as just pressing the R button.           

 The Wrap Up

 Very fun, interesting and new. The art is good and the 3D sprites look solid. The game originated from the Mechanics of Grand Prix Go, but it does disappoint in the way that it throws away some of the features that make GPG so fun. It can be enjoyed by a variety of ages but I think kids will love it more. Technique as well as raw speed is needed to master the tracks and cornering. The car unlock concept is well made and the cars are fantastic.

The Future of this series

I personally hope there will be another one of these games, with a different theme and different setting. Perhaps some new mechanics or physics? But at the end of the day I don’t make games I enjoy them! But still I would really like to see a space themed or a speedboat themed game.

If you turn slow and sharp, or fling wildly around the edge of the track, I know you will find this game fun!!!

Thank you for reading my article, I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing.