the Guru 3D - review

Authors: Micro$oft
Website: http://www.microsoft.com/games/midtown

Testing Machine:

PII 350

128mb RAM

Asus V3800 TNT2

36x CD-ROM

Windows 98 SE

DirectX 6.x

Nvidia Detonator Drivers Ver. 2.08

Game over...again

I'm not a very big fan of M$ games, so I went into this not expecting too much. I wasn't disappointed. It looks like good fun and while the graphics don't really take advantage of the technology available, it's very smooth. But the controls... jeeez. If you don't have a joystick, you're gonna have a real problem with this game. Just a slight tap of the key and you do about a 90 degree turn. Not much fun if all you're trying to do is take a nice gentle curve. I kept hitting things (walls, lamposts, etc...) which I should have been able to avoid with the greatest of ease and needless to say, my games didn't last very long and invariably ended in a scenario involving a lot of smoke.

Bloody cops...

You get to choose from 3 different cars, although I only tried the Dodge Viper. I just didn't have the patience to bother with any of the others. It's definetly designed to be an arcade type game. I had a head-on at one point with a security van. It exploded and I kept on going. Shortly thereafter I tried to go between two normal cars and, even though I got between them, I took enough paint off my car to blow the engine. Go figure. When I eventually started to get the hang of the controls and was on a flying lap, a cop car pulled out in front of, smacked me into a wall and, once again, game over. Maybe with a joystick this is more fun, but I just couldn't find enough patience to stick with it very long. I don't think I'll be spending any money on this, be it a purchase or bandwidth for a download.