World Rally Fever: Born on the Road

A competent kart racer with some anime style art tossed on top. I wanted to like this, but it really needed a manual. All the racers are different but you're never sure how. The graphics are a bit of blah mixed with ick (meaning there's nothing fancy and what there is looks like a hot mess). And sadly there's no incentive (unlockables, spiffy art, anything) to keep playing. I gave this two times around the track before slashing the tires.

I love this game! I remember how difficult it was to get the original to work on my computer, but when it worked, it was glorious! The art style was awesome, and the music was so sweet. you could put the original disc in a cd player, and it would play, i used to love that. It did not take itself seriously, and most of all, it was FUN! Something you don't get a lot of anymore.

NOT RECOMMENDED. My game experience strongly disagrees with the "fun arcade racing" part. Every game element seems to be laid out F you in the A. It's more of a one-time puzzle game than a racing one in that once you have solved all the quirks put there solely to screw you over, the annoyance probably tones down to a boring slog to the finish line. You don't understand this if you don't play it yourself and try the strange controls and experience the being awkwardly jerked across the screen when steer. A list a puzzle elements: -stage-specific road hazards that require very accurate timings and prior knowledge of them -every other competitor gets a flying start while you start with bicycle speed just to give the enemies an edge and make it all an arduous climbing up every single stage -passing enemies is quite challenging - they are big and often zigzag around to make it much more difficult, especially the top 4 dudes, to the point if there is 2 competitors together, they are so big you cannot pass them and every time you bump into them, you lose a lot of speed -you lose a ton of speed if hit a road hazard or a roadside object and get absolutely brutalized by a five second respawn if you hit a stopping object such as a bridge, greatly increasing your chances of losing the race -etc. All in all, this "memorize everything just to have a chance at beating this humor-dry game" is borderline torturous. The game isn't even that long, so quirky difficulty padding is pretty much the opposite of fun. Making tons of mental notes for every short track is more like unpaid work than fun to me. Even if you can play it, you won't because a cup is only 15 min long. Watch a longplay video instead of playing it. That's a much better experience w/ minimal annoyances.

I went into this trying to find nearest proxy to team17's brilliant StuntGP, i was very disappointed. Now i known micro prose from their brilliant cooperation with geoff carmmond and chris sawyer, team17 offcourse lemmings and worms making me expect a quality game. Track design relies almost exclusively on blindsiding player, vehicles control little bit off (you have to stop turning whilst you are in the corner or you will over steer into a wall), some tracks are so narrow its difficult if not night on impossible to overtake with more than one car in the road. I suspect the whole affair was meant for coin-op as that is where such bad design would support the model of inserting coins. Art is only semi-redeeming factor here, it looks interesting but even for its time outdated. Yes i know test drive, moto racer and mega race around this time used the same but those games had other redeeming qualities (such as better driving, less blindsiding and even excellent personality). It is also worth noting that first NFS, collin McRae rally, microprose's own GP2 did actually moved away from those practices around the same time this was released. In short, unless you have a particular attachment to this very game i suggest you get something more polished or at least interesting.

This is my first critical review on GOG, but when I saw this one hit the frontpage it brought back memories of playing this when it first launched. In particular, the disappointment of it being a dodgy Mario Kart clone with the fun removed. Most of the time you can just hold 'up' and auto-steer around the course due to the poorly faked 3D effect. If it's vehicular carnage you want, track down Carmageddon - and if it's cutesy racing that's genuinely entertaining I'd go for Wacky Wheels. It's crude but great, and actually requires some skill. In WRF you'll simply leave the opposition behind and never see them again.