You race tiny cars around the bath... and the kitchen, the flowerbed....
First off, Micro Machines V4 on the PC has all the hallmarks of dedicated console title, so that means no mouse control in the front end screens for a start. Now this isn’t a bad thing in itself, as navigating the front end screens is simply a case of using the arrow keys and return and escape for forwards and back, but it does belie the game true focus market.
While we’re on the subject of the front end, there’s actually precious little to do here. Unlike the Codies other racer, TOCA, you’ve only really got the gameplay options of working your way through the leagues, doing a time trial, a quick practise race or having a play with the map editor. Other than that there’s not much to see. You can’t customize any of the cars and there’s no options to soup up what you’ve got. This is bare-bones racing… just get a car and go.
Micro Machines V4 isn’t like your standard arcade racer in more ways than one. First, the tracks in here aren’t going to be like anything you’ve experienced before because you are driving a car that’s at most 2 inches long! Yep, you race using the self same Micro Machines that are the modern day version of the Matchbox and Dinky toy cars that we played with when we were kids. And, to make sure you know you’re racing a toy car, the tracks are all set within the real world and fully to scale… meaning you’ll be racing around the edge of the bath, or across the kitchen worktop… or the swimming pool, the hairdressers, the roof and the flowerbeds to name but a few.
Of course, being a tiny car in the big world means that there’s all sorts of new dangers for your diminutive vehicles. You know, the usual sort of stuff that you have to worry about such as getting your roof pecked in by a chicken, having your wheels nipped off by a crab or even just falling a few feet off the track which, given your small scale, is the equivalent of going over the cliffs on the Nice to Monaco road.
But it’s not just the environment in Micro Machines V4 that’s unusual; the way you win is different too. Very often you’ll not be racing to cross the line first but you’ll be racing for points. For those of you who’ve never played it, one of Micro Machines’ cool quirks was the lack of any split-screen racing. Everything took place on a single screen and the same goes for Micro Machines V4.
Apart from the checkpoint races where you drive alone and the ‘first past the post’ races, the camera will always try and keep all the racers on the screen at once. If you pull far enough ahead the camera zooms out and if you pull even farther ahead, the race is stopped, the cars reset and you’re awarded points. No matter how many laps you do, you won’t win until you’ve won the requisite number of points.
To help you in your quest for a podium place there’s various power-ups scattered around the tracks ranging from Sonic Booms that damage everything in a radius around your car to shockers that fry the other racers. There’s missiles, machine guns and exploding dice to drop in your wake as well as bolt on hammers to slam anyone in front of you… The idea is to cause as much damage as you can to the other drivers, perhaps even knock them off the course so you can get that crucial screen’s length away and win the points. The more battered a car is the harder it is to handle and the top speed is drastically affected which is what you need for that vital edge… But beware as other drivers, be they AI or human can take you out with the exact same weaponry… so look out for those health kits too!
Now for a ‘dipping’ game, one where you play a bit, go off and do something else and then play a bit more, this simplicity is fine. Micro Machines V4 has just seven buttons for the entire control set so it’s easy to just boot it up and get racing. But the lack of race options, with practically everything locked at the start, does limit the appeal somewhat. Sure, you can go back and race again over tracks you’ve already completed but on a fair few of the tracks, you know that’s not going to be too much fun. Why? Read on…
