Racing games on the Amiga tend to fall into two distinctive styles - the 3D from the cockpit/behind the car views that cover the majority of games in the genre and top view games a la Super Sprint, Supercars and more recently, CodeMasters' Micro Machines. Now, not wanting to be left out, comes Team 17 with their offering to this growing collection of racing sims.
Unlike most Team 17 games, there is no irrelevant plot -- just lots of fast action driving! The game is broken up into five different types of terrain ranging from inner city streets to indoor dirt tracks, grand prix circuits to ice and you have a choice of four different cars to drive in, each with differing performance and handling.
On each track, you race against two other drivers, yours highlighted in red, the others blue, and in order to progress through the game you need to come first or second to earn enough prize money to be able to afford the entry fee to the next race. To help you with this, assorted bonuses are scattered around the track including extra cash, turbos for extra speed and a myriad of other goodies.
Once you have successfully won a pre-determined number of races, you will be pitted against the "demon driver" in one of a number of specially devised tracks designed to test even the most skilled of drivers. Will you mkae it that far?
As well as this, there is an option to play simply for speed in a series of trials on different tracks, each having its own lap record which can be subsequently saved to disk for posterity.
For the bulk of the game, Overdrive is only for single players, unlike Gremlin's ageing Supercars II. However, Overdrive DOES have a two-player mode that, when used, puts all other games to shame. Instead of using a split screen display, Team 17 decided to use an Amiga-to-Amiga link to enable the game to retain its maximum 50Hz full-screen speed on a basic Amiga. This also has the advantage that you can't see what you opponent is up to until they are right on top of you and by then it's too late! A really effective touch here is that on your screen, both the computer and human controlled players appear as blue, so you are never aware of which car is being controlled by your friend (or enemy depending on how many times they force you to crash!).
All of this fast-paced action is accompanied by a selection of thumping soundtracks ranging in style from rave to rock, something to please all tastes, a different tune being present on each type of track. For those of you with only one drive, there is the option to use just one standard song to minimise disk swapping.
I don't know why, but while this type of game is nothing special, the sheer adrenaline rush from flying round icy corners at high speed had me hooked for ages and this game is certainly a must for any speed fanatic. While I don't think this is the sort of game you'll be playing 6-12 months after buying it, it's certainly going to give you more than enough playing time for you money.
Great music, great graphics, great gameplay - what more could you want. If you miss this, you're missing one of the best driving games of the year.
