Though the game box features a speeding cop car and implores you to “stay one step ahead of the law”, you may be shocked to learn that there are ZERO cops in the game. The same goes for pedestrian traffic, or any signs of life at all for that matter. What you do get is an opponent semi that refuses to move from the damn start line. What does this mean to you? It means that you can roam freely and explore the barren, boring worlds the developers have designed for you, because you’re guar-a-damn-teed to win every time no matter how much time you take. What you're reward? Only the most ridiculous winning screen since Tag Team Wrestling's "A winner is you!".
Each race is only one lap, so you have to work fast! Fortunately, there are a number of shortcuts available in the form of buildings and mountains available to you. You can pass through damn near everything in the game. No building is too solid, no mountain too tall to climb. If you’re feeling especially saucy, you can even venture outside of the level into a dull gray purgatory and cut your trip down by a significant amount. It’s your world dawg; there are no walls to hold you back. Word.
Not even bridges can stand in your way!
Having the ability to guide your redneck carriage through solid objects is a definite plus since steering the thing is about damn near impossible. Your truck will reach speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour with no signs of slowing down. If you attempt to round a corner, you’ll have to start your turn from about 500 feet way since your truck is only capable of the widest turns possible, which really doesn’t make much sense seeing that 75% of the trucks lack any kind of cargo. What’s more is that your truck defies the laws of physics further when going in reverse, your truck will start going faster and faster into negative speeds only to stop on a dime. Don’t believe me? Check it out. You owe me a coke.
Watch in awe as your Rig reaches excess of 300mph in reverse and stops on a dime!
As if things couldn’t get worse, this cavalcade of cockery rolls on. If you win a race, and provided you haven’t thrown the disc against the nearest wall yet, if you decide to try a new race on a new track, you’ll win as soon as you pass the start line. Man, this game is awesome.
A true Big Rigs speed run!
Graphically, this game is a mess wrought with generic truck models, repeating buildings, horrible textures, and two dimensional red glowing circles that float in the air to signify taillights on your vehicle. In most stages, the road can’t even draw correctly resulting in a brownish mess that draws ahead of you until you get close enough for it to draw in the rest of the road. To add to the graphical anomalies, there are a few objects that are missing textures, which result in some sort of crazy looking rainbow effect. Really smooth guys. Your onscreen stats, such as time and some unknown stat the game calls “PNT” can’t even fit into the display in which they appear. If you bother to explore levels, you’ll find a veritable treasure trove of hilarity in the form of buildings sinking into the ground or placed precariously on top of mountains, or street signs in the middle of the road. There are options to adjust the graphical settings, but let’s be realistic for a moment, they do nothing to help this game look any better. I beg you to try to tell a difference between the low and high settings. To top it all off, the loading screens feature a street racer with another game’s logo covered by the Big Rigs logo. Classy.
As far as sound goes, it’s nonexistent. If you leave the CD in your drive, one of two music tracks play. One is the aforementioned Euro-trash tune, while the other tries its hardest to come off as a surf rock tune that ends up sounding like the theme song for the old Batman show. Once the tracks end, the music doesn’t even try to loop and start over, nor does it skip to the next one. This leaves you playing in silence, allowing you to think about how low you’ve become and the thousands of other things you could be doing at that very moment.
It’s blatantly obvious that neither the geniuses at Acclaim, nor the developers at Stellar Stone play tested a single damn portion of this game. Supposedly, due to the waves of negative feedback the game garnered, the game got a new publisher, GameMill, and a “version 1.0” patch was released two months later. It’s one thing to suck, but it’ another to suck too bad for Acclaim. Surely their creative marketing department didn’t think to cater to everyone’s morbid curiosity with a big red sticker that read “voted worst game ever!” on the box. I wouldn’t have put it past them.
