Game: Super Runabout: San Francisco Edition
Console: Sega Dreamcast
Developer: Climax Entertainment
Release Date: 28th October 2000
With earlier editions on the original Playstation, the Runabout series focuses on short driving missions in which the player is set an objective and rewarded with various unlockable cars for completing the objectives in a certain time limit, and with other damage conditions. The third game in the series, San Francisco Edition for Dreamcast features 2 scenarios each with 8 missions (6 main and 2 hidden). In one scenario you play as a poor family who own a repair shop and in the other, you take control of the police.
There's plenty of cars to choose from, with 4 unlocked on each scenario at the beginning and the missions are varied with objectives such as collecting items scattered about the city, chasing down enemies and delivering items about the city. The game is set in San Francisco as the title would suggest with a large amount of open road on which to travel and explore.
The gameplay in Super Runabout is often fast and frantic, with a time limit applying to most missions and not a lot of room for error especially on harder difficulty modes. The cars handle a little loosely, sometimes feeling as if they're floating as opposed to actually being driven on the road. By far the most annoying part of the game however, is the collision physics. More often than not when you crash, you're sent flying, flipping or spinning in a random direction, losing valuable seconds of mission time and damaging your vehicle more than you'd have thought fair.
If a vehicle takes too much damage in a mission there's a warning which flashes up informing the player of "Damage Max" and on which tyre. If that spot is hit again, there's a good chance that the mission will be failed. The problem here is that in such a fast paced game where some missions require you to hit items or other cars, it's often difficult to regain control after a collision (not to mention that some cars are actually attempting to hit you and send you off course).
The car selection is good and there's a lot of fun vehicles including ATV's, HGV's, tanks, and a pig but it seems that there's not much these bonus vehicles are good for. Missions are usually best completed in one of the more simple starter vehicles and although the challenge of unlocking all of the bonus cars is fun, there's no real point in doing so. The missions themselves are good on the whole, some more difficult than others and there's features that could be improved in most, but the game's physics usually prove the most irritating part.
Graphically the NPC cars are blocky, and pedestrians are shockingly two dimensional. The player's cars are in slightly better definition and although the buildings in game are also rather two dimensional, the ones with glass parts that can be interacted with and broken have a nice effect. Musically the game features a lot of rock style instrumental both in the menus and behind the game, which fits in with the style of the game but isn't memorable on the whole.
Overall its a fun game which can get incredibly frustrating at times due to the collision and driving physics. Completing and all of the missions would take a lot of patience and unlocking all of the cars, even more so. It's a good concept which was pulled off in a pretty average fashion and although I'd reccomend playing it for as long as you can stand, I was quitting out of frustration after around an hour even though I enjoyed the game immensely in earlier years of my life.
Rating: 63/100
Grade: C
Game: Runabout 3: Neo Age
Console: Sony Playstation 2
Developer: Climax/Bam! Entertainment
Release Date: 1st November 2002
What technically should have been Runabout 4 if you number every game in the series follows more of the same driving mission formula, this time with 3 missions to choose from per level all of which need completing. Again there's a wide variety of mission types, as well as cars and new paint jobs and moves to unlock. The controls have been improved somewhat from the Dreamcast version, and although they're not perfect there's slight tweaks which have helped.
The missions themselves seem to be the worst part of this game, in the first two levels there's not one which I'd say was as fun as any of the missions in the previous game. There's a tedious tailing mission which takes upwards of 11 minutes of careful driving to maintain a 10-100m range behind the wife of a UN chief, and a mission which tasks you with stealing back money from bank robbers, made difficult by the crash physics.
Graphically the game has some improvements from the Dreamcast release, cars and structures look nicer I'd say, especially NPC vehicles. The city itself seems smaller with less choice of roads in missions, but perhaps that's more a reflection on New York than a mistake. Soundwise the game sticks to the same kind of instrumental rock soundtrack as its predecessor, the only real complaint with that here is that when the missions drag on, so does the soundtrack.
In a lot of ways this game is more like an expansion pack to the San Francisco game on Dreamcast. Slightly updated graphics and different (albeit boring and unimaginative) missions, in similar but slightly changed unlockable cars in a different city make the game feel as if its just an add-on. The physics engine is still pretty broken and car handling has been only slightly improved, so its not as if there's any new features to boast there.
Its hard to choose a game to recommend between this and the installment on the Dreamcast since one has frustrating gameplay and the other remnants of that gameplay mixed with less inspired missions. If this series had a better tuned driving mechanic and physics engine, more varied and interesting missions mixed with fast paced gameplay and unlockable cars actually useful for something, we'd be onto a real winner. Until then we're stuck with what we have.
Rating: 60/100
Grade: D
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