Highway Patrol II

Title           Highway Patrol II
Game Type       Driving
Company         UBI Soft
Players         1
HD Installable  No
Compatibility   Not AGA Amigas, A600 with degrader
Submission      Joachim Froholt (jfroholt@online.no)

Review
Cops are cool (at least computerized cops). So are fast cars. You would
think that if a game took these two ingredients and mixed them, it would
be a really cool game. So would I. Highway Patrol II put you behind the
steering wheel of a squad car (a Dodge or something), and your mission is
to seek out dangerous criminals and arrest them. Cool! Uh, well. Not
really. I'll explain why, but first I'll quickly go through the basics of
the game.

The game is viewed from behind the steering wheel (like in Test Drive).
You drive around a landscape with plenty of roads (but not much else). A
compass tells you where you're going and where (approximately) the car
you're hunting is. You can ignore the roads and head for it in a straight
line if you want to, but driving off road will eventually destroy your
tyres. If this happens or you crash too many times, it is game over.

Well, what's wrong with Highway Patrol II, then? First of all, the car
feels very wrong. The steering is complicated and very slow. A mouse
control option would have rectified this, but there's no such option
included in this game. Also, the speed seems terribly wrong. If you drive
slow enough to actually stay in the road, it feels as if you're riding a
tricycle. Gradually, you'll get bored and speed up. And then you'll end up
outside the road.

Secondly, this game is not very varied. There is not much to look at
along the roads and all the cars look the same (except the criminal's car
- but the only difference between it and the other cars is the colour).
All the missions are the same : locate a bad guy, turn on the siren and
shoot at him until he gives up. Very boring.

Thirdly, the road design is poor. The computer cars drive off the track in
the crossroads, because they can't make the turns. My final point is the
crappy computer drivers. They are blind! They totally ignore you, and
don't even brake down to avoid crashing into you.

Add some average graphics and quite lousy sound effects, and you get a
game which isn't worth mentioning again. So, I won't.

Alphabetical list.