Enter the corner at 180 MHP. Ram the outside wall, smoke starts to billow from under the hood. That damn Marvin passes on the inside, but he's nearly ready to blow, so a not-quite-so-gentle nudge in the wall is enough to induce a fatality. Unfortunately there's a loop in front, and with the damage my acceleration is shot. Time to stomp the throttle and pray. Reach the apex. . . not fast enough. . . ah, barely made it, but I got by three more cars. Now accelerate to 200 on the way down. Hit the corner flat out, sliding through in a glorious four-wheel drift while passing two other cars. Here comes the corkscrew. Nail the inside lane, hugging the guardrail. Got through. Here comes a jump. . . almost ready to blow. . . don't want to get too much air, but can't slow down. . . get air. . . land. . . race over.
So goes an average lap in Interplay's Whiplash, an arcade racing game that brings back visions of the glorious Stunt Track Racer. Packed in a fast but sloppy 3D engine, it won't wow the technoid geeks out there - bitmaps distort, the 3D world visibly ends, walls disappear, cars can often be driven through - but it still provides a great feel for harried, breakneck racing.
It's probably a bigger waste of time to analyze why Whiplash is such a blast to play than actually playing it is, but here's a feeble attempt anyway. Whiplash has a certain feeling, something that's nearly impossible to articulate. Things just feel right. Whether or not that means they feel real is especially irrelevant (and there are no pretenses toward realism in the car model - take a 90 degree corner at 180 MPH. . . no problem).
The game comes with eight different cars, plus two secret ones, which all possess certain attributes (acceleration, cornering, etc.) that make them perfect for certain tracks. These tracks, 16 in all (with another eight bonus tracks), contain an enormous number of jumps, loops, corkscrews and God knows what else. Belying the game's arcade nature, there are no configuration options for the cars - just hop in and drive. While you can't customize the cars, the controls are user definable, and work with multiple joysticks, wheels and throttles.
Once behind the wheel, it's fun fun fun for all as the races turn into utter chaos and mayhem. The programmers over at Gremlin (the developers) have created an immensely playable game, one that is immediately accessible and incredibly entertaining. Occasionally the tracks become too chaotic - some of the twists, turns and jumps make actual driving tough, and the eyestrain-inducing bitmaps for the walls and track don't help much at all. This is especially true of the second batch of tracks that make up the "Gremlin Cup."
One amazing feature in the game is the 16 player network play. What makes this a particularly commendable effort is that only one copy of the game is required for this mode of play. One player must have the CD in their machine - that's it. It's about time someone implemented this sort of policy. Thanks Interplay. Let's hope others follow your lead (it should be pointed out that Westwood Studios with Command & Conquer and Blizzard Entertainment with Warcraft had similar policies, though neither supports this number of players).
The new-style arcade design mandates that all games must have secret levels, cheat codes and hidden vehicles. Who knows what percentage of gamers never sees 50% of the game when it's hidden from them based upon their performance, as it is in Whiplash. You have to win a championship season at the medium difficulty level in order to access the tracks that make up the Gremlin Cup. Unless you are able to master the game (or cheat), you will not get to play 50% of the game that you paid for.
This has the bizarre effect of turning most of these arcade games into adventure games, in the sense that many people will never see most of the game. Most of all, though, they all seem to give you a sense of completeness once you have discovered the hidden secrets, and once you've attained that level of excellence (or cheated), there's little reason to play the thing again. If you've completed all of the levels of Doom, would there be any reason to play the game again if it weren't for all of the various add-on .WAD files and/or multi-player play?
While an IndyCar Racing provides you with the same goal (win the race), you can access all features at all times, so the mastery of the program becomes your goal. If the program is good enough, you will keep coming back to it. And back to it. Whiplash doesn't have that level of replayability, because once you're over the initial adrenaline rush of the loops and jumps, you're left with a pretty good arcade game, rather than an all-out "yow" perfect arcade game.
That's okay, though, because a pretty good arcade game is enough. While a perfect arcade game is no doubt preferable (duh), no one has really made the perfect arcade racing game. Some have come pretty close, but in the end Whiplash is a better game than Need for Speed, Destruction Derby and Screamer, due in part to its larger number of tracks and greater variety (compare the hills and airborne tricks of this versus the flat Destruction Derby and the "should get airborne any day now but never does" Screamer). Most of those games have better graphics and/or sound, but in the playability department (which is all that really matters), Whiplash has them beat.
