|
Scavengers Scorcher had me excited. There was a
screenshot of the game on the back of the box of one of
the UK Saturn’s I had purchased, the games magazines had
been previewing it for months. The graphics looked
slick, the tracks atmospheric, the futuristic vehicle
you race had bright green spheres surrounding it, this
game looked good. Then it got delayed, then delayed
again, and we all know that delays are bad news in the
videogames world. We all know that there must be a
problem with the game, a reason for the wait. Yet still
I was excited.
The problem for Scorcher is that whilst it had been
delayed the Saturn had seen other futuristic racers
released. Bullfrogs Hi Octane looked rough, but had a
real sense of speed, and well constructed tracks. The
Saturn conversion of Wipeout was poor, but fundamentally
it was still a decent game. By the time Scorcher was
available it was already looking dated. I remember being
immensely disappointed when I finally got to play the
game, so how would I find it now, more than a decade on,
returning to play the game for this review?
The issue with Scorcher is that it just feels so slow.
There is no sense of speed whatsoever. Alongside Wipeout
this feels pedestrian, there’s just nothing to get the
pulse racing, and that’s a shame, because the game looks
rather pretty. The lighting effects aren’t too bad for
the Saturn, and the draw distance is acceptable. The
circuits are a little bland and aesthetically far too
similar, and the game is way too short. I’m not going to
be too critical of the lack of tracks, because few
racing games in 1996 had a huge array of circuits, but
it’s fair to say the game does lack replay value
somewhat.
One thing that I’d forgotten in the years since playing
this, was just how frustrating the game is, and this is
why Scorcher is unable to redeem itself. You flying
along, quite happily, then, whoops! You’ve fallen down a
hole in the track. Next lap, you know the hole is there,
you try to steer around it, and damn! The controls are
so unresponsive, you’ve fallen off the track again. So
you try it with the wheel, you come round to the same
section again, and sod it! You throw the Saturn out of
the window.
The game isn’t impossibly hard, but it is hard for the
wrong reasons. It’s not because the opponents have good
AI that you lose, or because the circuits are ingenious,
nope, it’s because your vehicle won’t respond in the way
that you are asking it to. If you can pick it up cheap,
then it may be worth a spin, but frankly there are
better futuristic racers on the Saturn, and many better
arcade racers, sometimes things just aren’t worth
waiting for.
|
