Vigilante 8 Review

    The late nineties and the early two thousands saw a couple series of games where players would select a vehicle, go around collecting missiles, bombs, mines, and all kinds of other weapons and then attempt to blow up a number of other vehicles. Yes, I am talking about car combat games. Today these games are few and far between with the most recent memorable one being Twisted Metal on the Playstation 3. Back in the days of the Playstation and Nintendo 64 though, these games were a bit more abundant. Twisted Metal, a Playstation exclusive series, saw at least five entries on the Playstation One alone, then four additional games on the Playstation 2 and the handheld PSP also came out. That being said though, Nintendo seemed to be left out of the four wheeled mayhem. That would end in 1999 when a game known as Vigilante 8 was ported from the Playstation to the Nintendo 64.

***EXPLOSIVE SPOILERS COULD BE AHEAD. READ WITH CAUTION***

    Vigilante 8 is a spin off of a lesser known PC game called Interstate '76. The game was developed by Luxoflux, and published by Activision and first released on the Sony Playstation on June 4th, 1998. It was later ported to the Nintendo 64 on March 17, 1999, the Game Boy Color in January of 2000. While the game was greatly overshadowed by the Twisted Metal series on the Playstation, it rose to some popularity on the Nintendo 64 as it was basically the only option for owners of the system that didn't own a Playstation. The game received mostly positive reviews on release during a time where Twisted Metal 2 was on top of the car combat world. 

    The story of Vigilante 8 will vary depending on the character you play. The central theme though is that the game is set in an alternate version of 1975. The United States is basically falling apart so more security (the Vigilantes) seek to keep law in order in power while the Oil  Monopoly Alliance Regime hire a bunch of hitmen (the Coyotes) to do as much damage as possible in the south west United States in an effort to take over the global petroleum market. What happens when you complete a story, again is dependent on which character you play and whether or not you complete objectives.

    While a lot of people criticize Twisted Metal 2 for looking like a child's toy-box, they can not do the same here, because the graphics in Vigilante 8 look really cool. 

Each of the levels have their own unique layouts and visual effects as well. The levels vary quite a bit and include things like farmlands, a ski resort, a casino city, airfield, oil field, and more! The vehicles themselves all look nice and all the weapon animations are easy to see among all the chaos going on around you. One issue that I've always had graphically with this game is visual glitches. One of the most frequent problems I've had is when I'm playing a small car in the Valley Farms level where my car half vanishes into the wall of the waterway. There are also a few instances of the camera having problems properly positioning itself, but it's nothing that takes away from the overall enjoyment I had with this game. I'll be touching on the graphics again in a little bit as they have a pretty big impact on the game itself.

    When it comes to sound, Vigilante 8 does a pretty good job for what it is. There are countless metal crunching sounds that just sound painful and hard hitting, which is great given the genre of the game. The music is in my opinion a good attempt at bringing the disco era music onto the Nintendo 64. Right from the title screen's intro music you can easily tell what time period you are certainly in. 

All that praise being said, the voice overs are hit or miss. Some sound pretty good, but others are hard to understand. I know that they were going for a southwestern theme, and that includes some of the voices, but to this day I have no idea what a couple of these characters are saying. The good news all of the talking is confined to when a driver uses his or her special weapon. More on that in a moment.

    So with pretty good graphics and sound, the question is how does Vigilante 8 hold up in the gameplay department? The answer to that I think is pretty darn good.The vehicles range from jeeps, to trucks, to cars, to even a school bus. "Why stop with all of that?" Luxoflux asked themselves and decided it's the 70's again so lets throw an unlockable UFO into the fray too.  All of these vehicles handle in different ways, but all are a ton of fun to play. This is by no means a racing game and the physics are so crazy that every ride can do a whole bunch of things. For example, the school bus can do 180s in the air after flying or being blown off a ramp. Vehicles with ragdoll like physics makes for a hilariously good time. The controls take a short time to get used to, but once you get the hang of them, they're a breeze. Each vehicle can carry three weapons at a time plus a machine gune and each vehicle has a special weapon it can find as well.   

    I mentioned I was going to touch on graphics again and now is that time. As you take damage, your car visibly takes damage. Windows break, smoke flies out, pieces break off and it all looks great. Speaking of destruction. Pretty much anything you can shoot can be destroyed. Buildings, planes, trains, bridges, ski lifts, you name it. It can all be blown up and the explosions all look great and will literally send you flying if you are too close to a big one. The one downside to these big explosions is that the games framerate tends to drop a little bit with all the flashing going on. They probably could have toned down the explosions to fix the framerate issues, but again, it's nothing game breaking that's for sure. The levels all have different hazards and objectives. As I mentioned before those levels look great, and they all offer a host of things to blow up... That being said care must sometimes be taken.

    Underneath this demolition derby on steroids, there is a storyline I mentioned earlier. If you are playing as one of the Vigilantes, you are tasked with defending certain objectives. Some are easier to defend than others, but all can accidentally be destroyed by you if you are not careful. You cannot truly complete a character's story if you do not meet all the objectives. On the opposite side, if you play as one of the Coyotes, your objective will be to destroy something which is oh so much more fun. My advice as a Coyote is to explore every inch of the levels. Blow up whatever you like but take the time to see how big these places are and how they kind of fade in and out of view as you drive around. Almost seems lifelike in a way I think. 

    Another gameplay feature I'd like to touch on is the multiplayer because it is a lot of fun. There are a couple different multiplayer modes including coop and three deathmatch style modes. In coop you go through the game as you would in single player, but with two people. If one of you dies, it's game over. The story and objectives will always be that of player 1, so keep that in mind. The deathmatch games are all a lot of fun and certainly worth a shot. As expected with up to four players playing at a time and a ton going on on screen, the framerate can drop at any point. 

    On a scale of 1 to 10 I give Vigilante 8 a really solid 8 out of 10. This game showed up when the Twisted Metal series was really taking off, and I think got overshadowed by it. The graphics are great, but sometimes can cause framerate loss, the sound screams it's the 70's, and the gameplay is a truckload of fun. It does have it's small flaws in framerate drops, and occasional graphical glitches on certain levels, but none of them are even remotely game breaking. If you are a fan of car combat games, or just really fun deathmatch style multiplayer, check this game out. It really is an underrated gem on the Nintendo 64, and one of the only games of it's kind on the console. 

    Thanks for reading! I hope you all had a Happy Easter, or Passover, or whatever holiday you celebrate this time of year. While typing this blog I had to stop myself time and time again from comparing it to Twisted Metal 2. That being said, it's probably safe to say that I'll be visiting that topic at some point in the future. I want to keep rolling along here with these blogs, but in order to do so I need to make up some videos. So, my next blog may take a little bit of time to get up as I'll be working on a few at once. First I'm going to be taking a look at an English translation of Clocktower on Super Nintendo. After that I will be redoing my top 20 Favorite Super Nintendo games. It's amazing how just a few years can shift things around, and I think it'll be worth revisiting these games once again.