Преглед на симулатор "18 Wheeler: American Pro Trucker"
Година: 2000/2001
Издател: Acclaim Entertainment
Линкове за сваляне: mininova.org
Трейлър: youtube.com
Коментари: forum.listovkite.com
Описание:
In general, SEGA arcade ports to their home consoles have been very good. It's not an easy thing to transport the arcade feel of a coin-op game - loud speakers, huge screen, unique cabinet elements - and try to relay that feeling onto a home console. Certainly, it helps when SEGA adds a whole bunch of neat extra modes to the arcade port - Crazy Taxi is a great example of porting an awesome arcade game to the Dreamcast and making it even better. Of course, you can't do that for every arcade-to-Dreamcast port and in those cases, we hope the gameplay, visuals, and longevity of the original arcade game will be enough to keep you interested in the Dreamcast version. Perhaps that's what they were hoping for with the port of 18 Wheeler American Pro Trucker, but with very few extras and very short missions, you might find yourself parking this one after a long weekend drive.
As the title of the game implies, you'll be driving one of five semi trucks across five stages carrying different types of cargo. As you advance through the stages, you'll have a choice between to cargo types: normal and hard (hard giving you a bigger money bonus). Each stage has different branching points similar to Outrun; take the left fork and you might go through a residential area full of tight turns while taking a right fork might lead to dirt path going up a hill. To complicate matter further, you're not just on the clock to get to the end of each stage before the time runs out, but you've got a rival trucker who's constantly making driving hard for you. Whether he's ramming the back of your truck or dropping boxes in your path your rival, Lizardtail, will make it an interesting road trip. So, it's a good thing you're driving Miss Monster Of A Truck; trucks this big don't get slowed down too easily from collisions with lamposts, roadsigns, or even cars.
18 Wheeler shares some similarities to Crazy Taxi in that you CAN drive as recklessly as you want - head on collisions with cars, driving into buildings, etc. Of course, doing this will drastically slow you down and that's going to really hurt you a lot in 18 Wheeler as you'll need every second to just get past each checkpoint. Thankfully, there's one major gameplay mechanic that'll help you out immensely; find another big rig in front of you and get directly behind him. Positioning yourself correctly will put you in that truck's "slipstream" giving you a huge boost in speed. This feature is essential in the later levels as the road gets cluttered with all sorts of obstructions that will slow you down, but bear in mind not all things that block you're way are bad. Specifically, there's always a black van with a "+3 seconds" display over the vehicle and by ramming into this vehicle, you'll gain an additional three seconds on your time. Complete each stage successfully, and you'll be treated to a small mini-game where you park your truck through narrow settings and if you complete these mini-games you'll gain valuable upgrades like improved engine speed, greater acceleration, and more importantly, and louder, beefier horn.
Everything about 18 Wheeler is big and bad and if you get the feeling that this game would be so cool to play in the arcades, you're absolutely right. Unfortunately, that where I started playing this game and playing it on the Dreamcast at home isn't quite as fun. In the arcade, you're in this HUGE cabinet steeriing with a HUGE steering wheel, and when you hit the horn, you get this HUGE booming sound. This is one of the few arcade games that I believe should not have come to the Dreamcast because you lose so much of the feeling and experience from the arcade version. This is especially apparent since they've taken out the online play feature of the game. So what you're left with is a great looking game directly ported to the Dreamcast with little upgrades. Yes, there's a split-screen versus mode and the Parking Mode mini-games are okay. But those additional upgrades can't make up for the fact that the game is just too short.
Visually, 18 Wheeler looks very good. Unlike most racing games we've seen from SEGA, 18 Wheeler runs at 30 frames per second. There's nothing wrong with that at all, but with all the great arcade racing games blazing at a solid 60 fps, it's kinda weird to take a step back with 18 Wheeler. Don't get me wrong, the game still looks very good and I didn't notice any real dramatic differences between the DC version and the arcade version.
In the end, what really kills 18 Wheeler is the lack of gameplay length. Once you learn where and when to slipstream behind certain trucks and what branching paths to take, there's really no point in playing the game anymore. 18 Wheeler American Pro Trucker is a blast while it lasts, but when you're done, you won't find much more fun. 10-4 that, good buddy.