Death Rally

Now we're talking. Death Rally was one of my favorite games. It came out in 1996, when video games were starting to be fast, graphical, intuitive, and challenging. It's a top-down perspective racing game against three other cars, doing laps around a winding street, using weapons such as machine guns, spikes, mines, or your car, to blow other racers off the road. Oh, and there's a little cameo. Some of you may know who I'm talking about.

Gameplay: 8/10
In Death Rally, the only thing that matters is to smash. Just straight blow through everyone you see and try not to get wasted while you do it. There's a bunch of other cars and weapons, but only one catch; you start with $495 bucks and a shitty Beetle lookin' thing. It handles like crap, too. Best win some races so you can upgrade this stupid car, or better yet, purchase one of the other ones. At first, you're probably going to get blown up a lot, which leads to having to repair the car, and eventually just being broke as hell, unless you can either not take that much damage during the race, or pick up enough of the repair powerups that you'll find along the track. The whole idea around this game is to enter races, rank up, and eventually race the badass at the end to become a total boss, or something. -2 points for the tracks being too short sometimes!

Graphics: 7/10
It runs fast and well. The menu screens are a little cluttered but look pretty good nonetheless. The cars don't appear to have enough detail, and the customization is nonexistent, with the exception of the color of the vehicle. The environments that you race in could have been a little more creative, as there was no animation or changing parts of the track. -3 points for those reasons.

Sound: 4/10
This game lacks severely in the sound department. The music is bland, repetitive, and the sound effects are a lackluster attempt with a lame product. They need some more kerpow, you know, more squealing tires, more gun sounds, more great music, all of this is practically not there. It sucks. -6 points.

Overall: 8/10
Despite the sound and graphics not being that great, even for 1996, this game is still a ton of fun to play. Guaranteed the minute you start it you'll probably be playing it for a long time. This game was ported to Windows, so there's no crazy stuff to run it, and best of all. It's. Free. To. Download and it has Duke Nukem in it. Pick this game up from here.
http://www.joystiq.com/game/death-rally/download/death-rally-for-windows-full-game/