Reckless Drivin'
By Jaremy K. Rich
Staff Writer
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Manufacturer: Jonas Echterhoff
Price: Shareware ($12)
100Mhz or more is recommended for smoth gameplay. To play at optimal settings, iMac or better is recommended.
DrawsSprocket, and InputSprocket
MacOS 8 highly recommended. System 7 needs Appearance Manager to run.
12 MB of free memory. (Lower with just "Thousands of Colors")
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"Reckless Drivin' is an action game for the Mac written by Jonas Echterhoff. It's gameplay is similar to it's predecessor, Burning Rubber, a Mac shareware game released in 1996. In Burning Rubber one had to drive a car through 2-dimensional levels as fast as possible, leaving as much destruction as possible on the way."
Installation:
Fairly easy game to install, much like most shareware you will find on the market, links on the website for both BinHex and MacBinary. I experienced no problems with install, very simple stuff, haven't tried to install on a computer without the requirements written above.
Usage:
Now I'll try to be objective when speaking about this game, but you'll find that I am slightly biased as this game has gotten me hooked like few other games. This is a game that you will not like unless you are a racecar game fan.
I hope all those still reading have played a racecar game or are somewhat interested in playing one. Reckless Drivin' starts off with a screen that gives you all the options, using license plates as the buttons. The different menus consist of "Start", "Prefs" (or preferences), "Register", "Scores", "Help" and "Quit".
At the very start I did, and I suggest checking out the preferences. You'll see an entire slew of keys, some you may not understand if you are fairly new to racing games. The first few are fairly easy to figure out, as they are forward, backward left and right. Mind you, hitting backward does not automatically send you into reverse, but it slows you down and then you begin to go into reverse. The keys you might not recognize are the "Handbrake", "Kickdown", "Mines" and "Missiles" keys.
What makes this game cool is that not only can you kick ass by crashing into cars recklessly (hence the name "Reckless Drivin'"), but you can also get special add-ons such as: Spikes, Mines, Turbo Engine, Missiles and a Police Jammer. As far as the Spikes and Missiles are concerned, they're used mainly to get extra points, as you tear through the game, shooting at cars, and ripping them up with your spikes. The missiles can also be used to aim at certain buildings though, allowing you to get extra points during the game, as some of them actually give you more points than the biggest of the cars. The police jammer is explanatory, and the turbo engine is what I dread the most.
One might wonder why a turbo engine is such a bad thing... It's the lack of control. Only on the first level, and the fifth level can I use it, and not die continuously. This is because the first level is rife with straightaways, and only one or two harsh curves. The fifth level uses a boat, which is ridiculously impossible to stop, but has the most unbelievable cornering of anything you have ever seen.
While Reckless is no Carmageddon, for an independent game maker, it is an extremely fun game to play. As shareware, you only get the first three levels, so I highly recommend purchasing this, for the low cost of $12. It's just as fun and addicting as a game you'll pay $50 for, even for its lack of graphical splendor. I still play it in my spare time, and while I have been known to curse it out on occasion, it still interests me, and I still have fun playing it. Hopefully in the first three levels you'll see the diversity of this game, and eventually will buy it, but I'll let you in on a little secret of what you will find in the future when playing: the water level, a sweet level that is full of cool turns and is difficult as hell when you start playing it; an ice level, where no matter how hard you try to stop the skidding, you'll find a way to slide into a loss of life, and I still have trouble beating it flawlessly, even after my hours upon hours of experience; there's a sweet military level, where instead of police cars, there are tanks with mortars firing at you; and finally a beach level, where you have plenty of dune buggy jumps, and there are a bunch of dinky little go-carts on the track with you, which you can crash into and wreck with ease.
Problems:
None with a good computer. Often on computers with less ram or less processing speed, there may be a little skipping, in that you'll get low frames per second, but aside from that, I had no major problems.
There are however a few glitches, which I don't really know were avoidable or not, but they all came when using the boat on regular levels. I'll explain what I mean in the "Tips & Tricks" section following the conclusion. Basically if you crash with the boat in levels with water (but not the water level, meaning you go off into the water and die in a level), a few things can happen, either you'll just get a game over, it will start giving you infinite extra lives and money, or it freezes the computer. It's only frozen my computer one time, so I'm not quite sure that is a definite effect, or whether it was just the OS crashing.
Conclusion:
Reckless, while it may originally seem hard to handle the cars, soon becomes addictive, as my schoolmates soon found out. I first found out about this game when Nick (as in Nick Canfield) was playing it in school, and immediately I was hooked, after cursing a little bit due to my lack of coordination.
Tips and Tricks:
First off, I'm not sure whether or not this is accessible in the unregistered version or not, but once you register Reckless, by holding down option and clicking on start, a little window pops up. This window allows you to pick different levels and different cars, although unfortunately I can't help you with what numbers the cool cars are. I'm more into just playing it through with the normal car, because you can't get a high score with one of the other cars, and I'm all about competition and high scores.
No matter how slow you go, the cops will get on your ass. I once tried coasting through level 3, because I skid on those dirt paths a helluva lot. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that a cop car will still speed after you, with reckless abandon, driving you off the road.
Police jammers, while effective when you want to get top notches in time, aren't always as useful as one might think. When you have mines, your primary goal is to attract police cars, as they go down for 500 points a pop. The normal cars only go for 200, and the bikes go for 100. The trucks go for 500 each, except for gasoline trucks which are 250. The main goal for your offensive weapons (Mines, Missiles and Spikes) are to get points. The mines you want to save for police chasing you, the missiles for either trucks or big groups of cars (where you can take out 3 or 4 at a time, or against police cars. This is why police jammer can be a problem as now your mines are a waste unless you want to go through the hassle of planting them in front of trucks and getting out of the way.
Spikes, my personal favorite, work best with the police jammer. This way, you can take out as many cars and not be worried about those darn "pigs". Primary targets are of course the trucks. NOTE: Cop cars can't be spiked.
Time bonuses do not make up even close to the amount of points you can get by ripping up cars, but if you don't want to take the time to bust up tons of cars, or are a more pacifistic type person, you may want to just finish as fast as possible as well, but if you're there for the long haul, the more carnage the better.
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Pros: | Cons: |
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Addictive game
Low system requirements, and it doesn't take too much time if you just want to skip to a level (using the level cheat thing) and play a little bit
Low cost, and shareware if you don't want to pay for it (but I highly recommend paying for it, it's worth it)
Pretty good physical movements, cars skid/turn/brake pretty realistically
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Addictive game =)
Just a game made in Mr. Echterhoff's spare time. No masterpiece of graphical arts
If you don't like driving games, don't play this
Too easy once you have a mastery of the game, and often repetitive
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Bottom Line:
The Shareware Game to get for good quick fun.
Rating: 7 out of 10 Mac Faces.
Sideline:
Click here for our interview with Jonas Echterhoff!
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