Remember how whenever you used to get in trouble in grade school, someone would bring up your "permanent record"? The specter of your every major mistake haunting you the rest of your natural life was supposed to motivate you into thinking twice before you chucked that bottle of Liquid Paper at someone's eye or spit in the teacher's antacid. Perhaps once or twice when you missed out on a job or were stood up by a date, you thought, "This has to be because of the Vaseline incident in Mr. Mill's algebra class. There's no other explanation."

Well, it seems someone is looking at all those permanent records after all. Someone who is carefully screening and following up on them, looking for just the right mix of antisocial impulses and creative troublemaking. When the right people are found, however, they are not committed to institutions for observation (nor are they groomed for the Presidency, contrary to popular belief). Rather, they are offered jobs as developers for Rockstar Games.

In what other corporate environment is it acceptable to indulge in such sociopathic fantasies? Where else can you make games that feature carjacking, prostitution, looting, cold-blooded murder, blunt head trauma, blowtorching the homeless, etc., etc., and earn industry-wide accolades and fat paydays?

Well, the kids from all-day detention are back. Riding on the astounding success of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City comes a game with the tag, "The Future of Illegal Street Racing."

Midnight Racer II takes place on the streets of three big cities: Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Paris. As in the first Midnight Racer, the goal is to speed through each location like a maniacal devil while avoiding the heat of law enforcement. The upgrades you might expect - higher-quality textures, more realistic physics, and weather conditions that affect gameplay - have been implemented, but there are some surprises here.

The developers are attempting to inject a little more personality into the mix by including cut scenes to flesh out the racers you will be competing against. From what I've seen of them, the characters' designs are not as interesting as, say, SSX Tricky or your average fighting game, but they aren't total washouts like the ones in Freekstyle or Road Rash. The opponents are smarter, too, and you can no longer count on them blindly taking the same path every time you race. Instead, AI will make decisions on the fly.

There are twenty-eight vehicles in all, this time including motorcycles. Obviously, the bikes can squeeze ahead a lot more easily than cars, but at the cost of maneuverability. If you want a larger vehicle, but you need to squeeze through a tight spot, a quick tap of a trigger will get your car up on two wheels. Or you can just choose to smash through some obstacles. In fact, certain buildings will allow you to put in a drive-thru where there was never one before - in effect, creating your own shortcut.

Split-screen is available, of course, but the real fun will be online. In addition to racing around on the standard tracks, you can create your own checkpoints and have your friends race around on a map of (partly) your own design. Capture-the-Flag and Detonator modes extend the replay value even further. In the latter, the goal is to locate the detonator and bring it to a trigger checkpoint in order to blow the competition sky high. Of course, simply finding the detonator is no guarantee that you will make it anywhere near the checkpoint, as there are ample means to put the overzealous driver out of commission.

Oh, I have to be going. Seems Rockstar caught wind of the time I super-glued that sleepy kid's forehead to his desk. They're talking project director here.

 

· · · Nick