Full Throttle 2

BARGAIN BASEMENT

It's damp and it's dark
But it's always quite merry
When you're locked down the cellar
With PILLAR & PELLEY!

Zeppelin Games
£2.99
Reviewer: Jon Pillar

From the author of issue 63's Reader Covergame Earth Shaker comes the sequel to a game so old that when it was originally released, Rich's flares were in fashion the first time round. A motorbike racer, FT2 challenges you to qualify against 39 other riders on 8 famous circuits from Donnington to Sweden. These are modelled using the 'Gravity Variation System' to ensure authenticity, and what this means is that if you roar off the starting grid at 200mph (as I'm inclined to do) you'll go screaming off the track at the first bend, since this is what would happen in real life. Control is the name of the game here, the ability to know when to pour on the speed, and when to, um, pour it off. (You need to be a cross between those riders in the 1970s safety commercials bloke from Star Hawk!) Manage to finish in the first 30 and you progress to the next track, with the qualifying position upped by 5. And so on. All this is good fun, with small graphics and typically fast 3D scrolling, but does seem overly harsh on bad riders (like me). If you collide with another bike, you slowly decelerate to a dead stop - by which time all the bikes you've overtaken have zoomed past, and you're last again. It's this frustrating penalty that stops FT2 hitting the high notes, but overall it's a debut which earns Mr Batty a hearty hurrah. HURRAH!