Vanishing Point

"Drive your imagination! - Taking the driving experience to the next level, Vanishing Point focuses on the true excitement and feel of arcade racing. featuring some of the most sought-after cars of today, such as the Audi TT, Lotus Elise, Dodge Viper and many more. With an unparalleled driving-physics engine, graphics and gameplay to match, this is the most spectacular racing game ever seen!"

From Wiki:-
"Vanishing Point was first announced at the European Computer Trade Show, being self-funded by Clockwork Games until Acclaim licensed the game. The game was developed in 18 months with a team of eight people. Neil Casini, director of Clockwork Games, told Official Dreamcast Magazine that they had adopted the game's title as a reference to their efforts to "create a rendering engine that had no pop-up or 'fogging' as far as the eye could see, i.e. the vanishing point". Casini told the magazine that in developing the gameplay they had sought to "emulate and combine the driving model from Sega Rally with the exaggerated reality of Scud Race"

A late PlayStation release with the PS2 making waves but there is still plenty of life in the PS1 and driving games. The blurb on the back of the box and screenshots are accurate and really sell the game. This is one of the last original games I bought for the PS1 before moving onto PS2. Clockwork games that developed the title were formally known as Lunatic Software which put out some great Amiga games like Wiz n Liz. The game makes use of different gfx modes notably low res for the main game and Hires interlaced for the menus which helps them stand out. The game looks great overall, not quite Ridge Racer 4 great but the tracks are all very detailed with great texture work and many tracks also have a bit of activity on them which adds a little to the immersion.

The game is a very different experience to other racing / driving games of the time. It plays like a rally game with road cars, on roads ... and in the Tournament, which is the main part of the game, you don't race other cars for position so much as racing against the clock to be on top of the leader board. During the race you have rivels as well as normal traffic to get in your way and annoy causing you to slow down costing you overall time. Of course, that is not the only challenge. The games exaggerated handling physics causes the car to constantly fight back when steering at speed and it doesn't take much to oversteer into a spin or flip the car. Hitting walls and other cars will also have an effect on the car. Maintaining speed while turning required strategic use of both the handbrake and normal brake. As mentioned, it feels a lot more like rallying which isn't an accident as there is an unlockable rally mode. The physics engine has a lot of quirks which can end up in having your car go into helicopter mode and was re used in Driver 3 ... Maybe.

So, while the game is well presented, and gameplay is challenging but too unforgiving it does have a problem. The game goes on for too long. Now game length is seen as a huge plus today and anything that can be finished in 30 mins is sent to hell. The amount of content matters else it just feels repetitive and repetitive it is with a tournament that requires approximately 8 races within 3 Heats for all 16 cars. Thats 128 races and only 8 tracks to race on in both directions. It can be hours before you see a new track or variation appear. Thats approximately 11 hours if everything goes right first try and then there is still the stunt and rally modes to try after that. It really shouldn't be a negative, but it has put me off trying to longplay this game for a long time. The difference between the three heats is number of stages and laps. I think a better system would have been to have a 'one make' tournament for each car and just the one three stages, three lap heat to give a sensible rate of progression. The rally mode is 10 heats with varying number of tracks. Each is a one lap time trial with no traffic.

Playing through Tournament mode and coming in first at all points unlocks all standard and secret cars, the tune up garage and few other secrets along the way. For full completion stunt and rally modes need to be played. I don't show of any replays dragging the video out this time, as I think the intro demo does a good job showing how that looks. I stick to one car at a time completing all three heats before moving onto the next car. It saves having to re learn each car which all handle differently. The games AI Rivels can act a bit wonky with them turbo'ing up hills yet crawling on straights. They can also crash which can be entertaining but it's another obstacle to tackle. I play mostly in Chase view but also show bumper view for one of the heats and is my preferred way to play.

Part 2 of the longplay shows Stunt mode, rally mode and single race modes which unlock all remaining locked content which I show off at the end of the video. In stunt mode, you need to achieve a specified number of points on each level to unlock the next. The maximum possible points are 1600 but only 1400 are needed to unlock everything. I then playthrough Rally mode for the final set of unlocks. Of course, the game has to hold one back so it's off to single race mode to unlock the final secret video. I make use of the secret cars in this mode to show them off. The game is technically complete now, but I close out by showing the racetrack courses accessible in Time Trial mode.

The music in the game is alright but doesn't fit well for race driving in my opinion. While fine for early nineties games like Wipeout and destruction derby, in the 2000s mainstream licenced music was being used more in games like F1, Toca and gran turismo. The game also uses redbook cd audio which isn't typical of such games in the 200s, usually opting for streaming compressed music files.

Overall, the game looks great with atmospheric tracks with challenging gameplay due to the car physics which will put people off. It's a long repetitive grind to unlock everything due to the same tracks playing over and over again and doesn't feel very rewarding when it's all over. A well-done screen and not even a credit roll and all were really doing is unlocking the very short ending videos for each mode. But the game is different enough from other arcade style racers like test drive, need for speed and the likes that the game should be given a chance.

Ill finish by noting that Asphalt Urban GT suffered from the same repetitiveness playing the same content over and over for hours, but that game isn't remotely as enjoyable to play. Long-playing that made me question my life choices and ask myself if I could ever long-play a racing game again especially a lengthy one. Fortunately, the answer was yes.

Part 1: Tournament Mode
00:00:00 Demo and Titles
00:03:18 Ford Explorer
00:40:45 Ford Mustang Cobra
00:01:15 BMW 325i
02:02:35 Ford Ranger
02:46:15 Alfa Romeo GTV 3.0
03:28:00 Audi TT
04:09:35 Lotus Elise
04:47:18 Ford Focus
05:27:14 Jaguar XKR
06:16:22 Toyota Supra
07:04:28 Shelby Cobra
07:43:45 TVR Griffith
08:26:00 Aston Martin V8
09:08:27 Lotus Esprit Sport 350
09:50:34 Dodge Viper GTS
10:36:28 Aston Martin V8
11:21:16 Credits

Part 2: Stunt, Rally and Single race modes
00:00:00 All Stunt Events
00:30:20 Rally 1
00:36:12 Rally 2
00:43:02 Rally 3
00:52:40 Rally 4
01:02:53 Rally 5
01:14:29 Rally 6
01:27:00 Rally 7
01:40:28 Rally 8
01:56:40 Single Race Foward Tracks
02:37:22 Single Race Reverse Tracks
03:18:28 Time Trial courses
03:32:02 Unlocked bonus content.