Wild Wheels

In the third of his series of retrospectives of games that might have passed you by, Thomas Wellicome reviews a Speedball type game with a difference

Wild Wheels is basically a football game with a twist. All the players are motor vehicles. These can range from a basic 4x4 through to a giant tracked tank. All the vehicles have ludicrous names like The Shrimp and The Tadpole, and are equally unlikely on the physical probability front. The game-play borrows a lot from the likes of Speedball and Brutal Sports Football, with the basic premise being that you must get your ball in to the opposition's net under any circumstances. This usually involves driving your vehicle at full tilt into whichever member of the opposition has the ball. Of course the bigger the vehicle the more likely your opponent is going to end up needing a slight bit of body work.

Each vehicle can withstand a certain amount of damage before it explodes, therefore you can win games by simply turning the opposition into a collection of bent hub caps and battered rear axles. You drive one of your team's cars while the others are controlled by the computer and can be set up to behave in different fashions, such as chasing the ball or trying to clobber the opposition. Your own car has a couple of lives while the other cars in your team have one and once they're gone, they're gone. You also lose points for every car that the opponent manages to send to the scrappy. The opponent's team behaves in the same fashion. Points are gained from scoring goals, the amount of points depending on how close you get to the lethal net, or from keeping the ball in your opponent's half for the majority of the game. This acts like a running bonus that increases while you are in your opponent's end and decreases while they are in yours.

Every now and then bonus tiles appear on the pitch and distract you from scoring goals. Extras gained include missiles, bonuses which allow you to drive the more powerful vehicles and a tile which blows up the opposition's main car. Beware though, as the bonuses are not all good news. Some throw your car off all over the place, while ice can sporadically form in certain parts of the pitch making control twice as hard. The opponent cars can also pick up bonuses giving them a bit of advantage over you. Every so often, as if this wasn't enough, the ball multiplies itself until someone manages to get one of the resulting balls into a goal. These can result in crazy free-for-alls as you try to be first to score. The amount of points you score in a match determines how much you get to spend on a new team of vehicles for the next match. You have to buy new vehicles for each game and scores are only rolled over into the next game (meaning you can lose them) if you choose a car that does not use up the full amount of your score. This makes getting the better cars quite difficult, or quite possibly I'm just a bit rubbish.

The graphics consist of two-dimensional sprites operating over a three-dimensional pitch and are slightly reminiscent of games like I Play 3D Soccer. For the most part the graphics work well, though they can occasionally jerk about like any over-ambitious ST title can if too much gets on the screen at once. Generally though the effect is fairly convincing for a 16-bit game, though the word garish does spring to mind when describing the arenas. The cars and the over-sized ball are nicely drawn, and the animation when the cars turn has not been skimped on too much. The few still screens are reasonably well drawn, though the game falls for the usual trap of including slightly wonky drawing of a babe who seemingly has forgotten to put on any underwear beneath her rather tight dress. Her mum must be so proud. As probably was the programmer's mum.

Control is fairly realistic with each car having a limited turning circle. As you might expect this leads to a few irritating situations when trying to line yourself up with the ball, get it wrong and you can end up turning in a circle right round the ball! Also the cars have a certain amount of inertia which varies depending on the model, which can lead to all sorts of over-shooting target antics. This becomes particularly unpleasant when you find yourself heading to fast towards the opponent's goals, something you have to get as close to as possible to score the most points, which are lethal to touch. Moving the vehicle about is amazingly straightforward to get into. Push the control pad/stick in a direction and the car turns and moves in this direction, gradually accelerating up to some pretty pacy speeds. Turning isn't instantaneous, however, so beware and the inertia means you'll be skidding all over the place.

Sound is the usual Ocean affair. The menu screen music is acceptable if not outstanding chip music, while the in-game effects are at best puny, though they just about convey the atmosphere they are meant to suggest, a few beefier samples wouldn't have gone amiss though. The silly thing is that the game seems to play all its music and effects through one channel, so when an event happens, any other sound effects stop. Now call me Mister Silly but although a bit on the underwhelming side I thought the ST sound chip had three sound channels and a noise generator, so why is everything through the one channel?

The artificial intelligence of the opponents is reasonable, with them putting up a reasonable fight for the ball. Occasionally they do some quite sneaky manoeuvres, though whether this is down to good programming or just sheer fluke is a matter of some debate. Your team mates don't seem to be all that bright and spend most of their time getting in your way, though a lot of their more useful moments occur when you're not watching, so I might be being a bit harsh.

One annoying aspect of the game is the slightly restricted 3D view you get. Going towards the opponent's goal is fine, however, start trying to follow an opponent back towards your own goal and the pitch does not rotate as you expect it to. As such you find yourself roaring at high speeds with virtually no idea of where you are going, though it's usually the back of your own net and instant death. The game allows you to adjust the distance from which you view your car which makes things a little easier, and there is also a basic radar to help you work out where the ball is hiding. More irritatingly you can also occasionally be tackled by an "invisible" opponent which grabs the ball straight off you and roars down the other end of the pitch and scores.

Progress in the game can be quite slow, and it will take even some of the more hardened players out there a while to master it and get to drive the more powerful vehicles. You may not even bother to, as the game is quite fun as a quick pick-up-and-play game for every now and again.

On the plus side the game is hard drive installable, a welcome and unexpected feature. Two players can also participate via a null modem cable which makes the game all the more fun and irons out a few of its more ropey AI problems.

I was pleasantly suprised by Wild Wheels. I was expecting a jerky unenjoyable bore fest, particularly as the game was released by Ocean, which is generally a bad sign in my book. Red Rat has done a good job here though and the game is a pretty enjoyable romp and a lot of fun in two-player mode. It's not quite Speedball 2, lacking the slickness and polish, but if you can put aside your Bitmap Brothers snobbery for a few moments then this is well worth a look.

thomas@myatari.net

MyAtari magazine - Review #1, August 2004