Hi-Octane

Game review

How will the races look like in the future? Will it be a race of super modern cars without a driver, where there will be no injuries or damage? Or it will be a wild hovercraft race, where everyone fights with all sorts of weapons. Hi-Octane attempts to answer this questions and bring players a view of absolute combat. You control one of six hovercraft, each of which is armed with a machine gun with unlimited ammunition, as well as missiles, which, like fuel or armor, are limited and supplemented either by taking special power-ups or destroying enemies. On all of the nine tracks it is possible to find various abbreviations, several types of surfaces, jumpers, gates and the like. The game contains several modes. First of all, the race, then the championship, hot-seat, split-screen multiplayer and also the Clone Race, where the player races with a translucent clone of the best time or Death Match, where the one who has the most frags at the end of the game wins.

The game offers a choice of six hovercraft vehicles differentiated by their top speed, armour, firepower, weight and appearance: KD-1 Speeder, Berserker, Jugga, Vampire, Outrider, and Flexiwing. There are six tracks to race on, with names like New Chernobyl which hint at a dystopian futuristic world (although the game does not feature a backstory). The tracks offer different difficulties, various textures and types of landscape like wastelands and city streets. Certain parts of the track allow to recharge vehicle's fuel, shields or ammo, although the vehicle has to slow down in order to fully benefit of the recharge. There are also power-ups on the tracks, recharging fuel/shield/ammo (10, 100 or 200%) or upgrading the car's minigun, missile or booster, for more power. Other parts of the tracks changed in the course of racing, opening shortcuts or places with scattered upgrades for a short time.

The different vehicles display different handling values in the front end but these are just for show, the underlying stats are the same for all the vehicles. Due to the dimensions of models the vehicles appear different sizes but in fact the collision volumes are all identical meaning that you are just as likely to hit something with the Outrider as you are with the Jugga.

There are four camera views, switched while playing: three of them are from behind the vehicle with one being further away than the other, and the fourth view is from the front of the car, with no parts of the car obscuring the sight.