Davilex Double Header: London Racer Destruction Madness and Police Madness

Game: London Racer: Destruction Madness
Console: Sony Playstation 2
Developer: Davilex
Release Date: 14th October 2005

After releasing at least four crappy titles in the "Racer" series, Davilex decided that it was time for two more, within the space of a month. London Racer: Destruction Madness was the first of these and continues the trend of low budget and low quality games. Some of the assets from previous games return to give us the same low resolution recreations of London, Edinburgh, Paris and a few other cities. At the main menu, only Career Mode and Quick Race are available as options.

Career Mode presents players with races which they must beat to continue. Destruction Races are essentially normal races, except players may destroy their opponents to win by crashing into them or pushing the cars into obstacles. This is a long process, only sped up by the few weapon upgrades scattered around the track. The next two modes are fairly similar; Survival and Deathmatch both pit players against eachother to the death, but Survival is won by being the last car on the road, whereas Deathmatch is won once a certain number of kills is reached. Both of these modes can easily be outsmarted by simply hiding and letting the AI do most of the damage before swooping in for the kill.

Lastly there's the Crash and Bash mode where points are awarded for doing damage to the environment. Unfortunately there's no indication of which items are destructible and much of the time within this mode is spent wrecking your car for no real purpose. It's hard to outscore the AI in this mode, and it's where I gave up in career mode. The game's handling is by far the worst part, with completely uncontrollable cars to the point where even turning a corner or keeping the car in a straight line is near impossible.

The damage system is basic and there's no damage modelling, there's a small variety of items to collect and use but most of them are pretty uninspiring. The overall lack of action in all modes, coupled with an almost non-existent sense of speed contributes to an extremely boring feel to the game. It's hard to accurately describe just how cheaply made this title feels when playing, but imagine an iPhone made in China on the cheap, and you're in the right ballpark.

Graphically the game looks like a very early PS2 title, despite being released in 2005. The lighting engine is very basic, most textures are low resolution and there's a strangely sickening motion effect caused by having such a big rear-view mirror at the top of the screen. Musically it's incredibly repetitive, with some tracks repeating 4 times within a single race due to their short length. All other sounds are basic and fairly crappy.

Overall London Racer: Destruction Madness seems to hit a new low for the series; with 4 types of racing available, all of which are poorly executed, the worst handling yet, no sense of speed, uninteresting item pick-ups and poorly programmed AI. If the game had been made any more cheaply, I'm not sure it'd actually be able to run without crashing.

Rating: 5/100
Grade: F

Game: London Racer: Police Madness
Console: Sony Playstation 2
Developer: Davilex
Release Date: 28th October 2005

You'd be forgiven for thinking that a game released just two weeks after the monstrosity that was London Racer: Destruction Madness, and with a similar subtitle would be just as bad. For some reason though, Davilex saved the best instalment of the London Racer series for last as the only shared assets between the two games are the intro and menus. The main game is mission based, with the goal being to raise enough money from stopping and catching criminals to earn a fast car for the police to use, as the game starts with tired old police cars which are "all they have" as the game explains.

Each mission has a target, and players must roam around fairly undetailed and circular motorway maps where active criminal cars are around (indicated by a red marker) and can be chased down in order to earn money, or passive criminal cars, which must be scanned and then a mini-game passed, to catch. If the minigame is failed then a full chase ensues. Most of the minigames are super easy, but there's one which is almost impossible. In terms of variety there's not a lot to do, other than some checkpoint type missions, but the overall gameplay isn't awful.

The car handling in the game is far better than anything Davilex have ever produced and could almost be called normal by other developer's standards. The graphics aren't much to look at, but they're acceptable and there's some interesting depictions of the UK, France and Germany. Soundwise, the game's music is very basic, but by far the funniest thing is the voice clips when civilian cars are hit. Stereotypical British accents repeat phrases such as "Oi, I've done nothing wrong!" and "I'm innocent!".

Overall London Racer: Police Madness is actually fun, if only for twenty minutes or so, until you've experienced all the game has to offer. There's not enough variety for long term enjoyment, but it achieves a quality standard far above most Davilex games. It's baffling as to why they even decided to release Destruction Madness 2 weeks before this, but such is the nature of budget games.

Rating: 45/100
Grade: D