Knightrider

Review - Chris gets nostalgic as Michael Knight and his talking car hit the small-screen again.

As an 80’s child there was nothing cooler on TV than Knightrider (except maybe The A-Team). Michael Knight was the ultimate chauvinist boy racer, which to anyone else would have been wrong, except for the fact that he had the coolest big boy’s toy in the shape of Kitt. Seeing David Hasslehoff in those tight jeans and with a ridiculous bouffant sent the girls crazy and any boy in his right mind wanted to look like that. It is obvious then why as the main bulk of young Knightrider fans reach into their 20s a PS2 game should hit the shelves donning the name.

The story is very basic with Michael Knight’s twin brother and Kitt’s prototype Karr teaming up as the unstoppable villains performing a series of daring raids which no police car can stop as they are using a ridiculously fast truck called Goliath and Karr’s scientific technology. This ludicrous story contains a certain amount of irony as the cars manage a blistering 127mph, which by today’s standard, would be a mere snails pace. It is not just your standard racing game either, although the majority of the levels are chase-based. In the first mission you must practice all your special abilities, which include a turbo jump, a ski mode, where you can skip up onto two wheels to get you out of any tight scrapes, and a scan mode to scan buildings or other vehicles for clues. Although all these modes are different they still lead to very limited game play with non-chase based missions centring round either an obstacle course with items to scan or battles where you have to keep smashing into the other car until it is destroyed. It is also a shame that you don’t get to drive up into the base-truck as it is moving along the road.

To compare it to other games would be unfair as it is kind of a cross genre game. It beats most racing games as it has the ski mode and turbo jump as well as levels involving scanning and it beats skill games as you have the racing element too. It is interesting to note, however, that comparing the racing elements with other racing games it falls seriously short and the same is true comparing the skill elements with other ‘skill’ games.

It is glaringly obvious that this game relies heavily on the name of Knightrider, as it’s main selling point, as the game pulls no punches in the graphics or sound departments. The graphics are undemanding and at times worthy of the PSone, the sound too is equally uninspiring with the only highlight the opening sequence with Kitt driving across the desert and the theme tune blaring out. The in-game voices are also, all too obviously, not the original voices with a poor substitute for David Hasslehoff being the most ridiculously obvious.

The game also lacks depth with no multiplayer option or even any variation from the lone-player campaign option. The only other choice is doing the missions you have completed again in the mission mode! I think you have to agree that is pretty uninspiring.

This game is rather ‘bad’ then, not because it isn’t ‘good’, but that it goes nowhere in doing justice to the legend that is Knightrider. There would have been limitless potential in a GTA3-style game based around the character of Michael Knight and incredible talking car that puts Herbie well and truly in the shadows. A missed opportunity. This aside, fans of Knightrider will probably enjoy this game for the brief period this game is good fun but as for longevity of play this games falls heinously short of the rest of the pack. This is one to pick up and put down very quickly, with only a few redeeming qualities.

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