Ever seen the car to the left? That's a 550 Spyder.

So you like Need For Speed and like Porsches? If you do remember, NFS has a game in its series that features Porsches and Porsches only. It’s called Porsche Unleashed – with basically every Porsche you can imagine. Starting in 1950, you start out driving the Porsche 356, which to an undiscerning eye, looks like something Hitler commissioned back in the 1930s.

The game feels like a late-90′s Need For Speed game, and most similarly to the fourth Need For Speed, which happened to be called High Stakes. This time, however, you do not get the luxury of having a selection of marques nor wild police chases as you do in that game, but you get to drive every Porsche you can imagine produced before the year 2000, which means none of today’s four-door Porsches.

The game is certainly engrossing. The races are basically one-way cannonball runs, where you race between several opponents in similar cars, or you can choose to be a test driver, which will allow you access to a nice set of wheels but you’ll do mildly pointless tests such as shaloms. It’s a bit like Gran Turismo’s licence tests, except even more pointless. I prefer the Evolution mode.

The game is a bit tough to play on a keyboard – no denying – because when you press left or right, the computer assumes you want full-lock, putting you into a slide. The driving physics is rather realistic, and because we’re talking about Porsches here, it means that the throttle is something you wanna be careful with, and with the keyboard, your throttle is either floored or zero, which makes you get wild trailing throttle oversteer.

The garage where you can mess with your car's tuning, open the hood and doors, and spend moolah on new and used cars.

Thankfully, the game runs excellent with steering wheels. I tested the game with my Logitech G25, and it ran excellent. The force feedback was great, letting you know when you’re out of grip and what kind of surface you’re on. And the ability to modulate the throttle and brake is a great way to get control over the wild beast of a Porsche.

At the same time, however, the beginning stages seem too easy. You’ll inevitably get first all the way as long as you don’t spin out, and that means that if you have a steering wheel, you’ll probably breeze past the 50′s. The tracks are extremely wide, and the speeds are low – maxing out at 140km/h or so in a 356B.

Nonetheless, I’d say while this game runs great on a netbook, the need for a steering wheel to play this game effectively and enjoyably makes this game not a really good contender for a netbook game. Of course, you could play this game on a big screen using the HDMI-out on your netbook or the regular display output to maximize the game’s potential.

The game runs well on the integrated graphics card that your netbook came with, so there’s no need to worry about performance. But while this game has a lot of potential, this game doesn’t serve as a good game to play on-the-go, as you really want a big screen and a joystick at minimum to enjoy discrete control over your car. Without this, driving the Porsches is akin to driving on ice.

Like

Extremely wide range of Porsches

Great driving realism

Nice in-car dashboard view

Dislike

Not playable without a steering wheel

Not enjoyable without a big screen

Verdict

If you’ve got a steering wheel and a big screen, this game takes the cake. If you don’t, the game’s pretty much over.

Gameplay: Engrossing.

Graphics: Pretty average.

Work needed to get game to play: Minimal; runs well on low-powered netbooks.

Image: Gameolio, Anandtech

This Vagabond is packing heat. And still in last place.

Back in the mid-90′s, when things were much simpler, games still conquered our hearts, minds and souls much like the best games of today. The difference is that today’s games are much more engrossing and looks great. Either way, time has never changed how much time good games suck away from our lives. The wife never approved.

Enter Death Rally. A racing game made by Remedy – the makers of Max Payne and Duke Nukem- made in 1996. The game is a bit like Blur, but played in a birds-eye view perspective. Your goal is to race a car around the track and win. While doing that, you can employ the use of guns mounted on your car, or spikes, mines, oil slicks to wreck or at least, impede the pace of your opponents. With the dough you made from getting first, you’ll spend them to buy upgrades and new cars. Eventually, you’ll fight someone who is best known for saying “Hail to the King, baby”. Didn’t know that Duke knew how to drive until I played Death Rally.

The game is now a free download, updated to be playable on modern computers. This game can be completed in one sitting, assuming you have absolutely nothing to do for 8 hours and know how to play it well.

Get it here!

Tweaks

Tick these.

Although Remedy claims that Death Rally has been optimised for Windows, it seems to be optimised not for Windows 7 as there were some issues which had to be resolved before it played well.

My system was fraught with intermittent hangs that last for around 5 seconds, and its so frequent that it doesn’t play well. There is an easy solution to this, though – it’s a small problem.

Right-click the Death Rally shortcut on your desktop and go into Properties and find the Compatibility tab. Tick everything under Settings that starts with the word “Disable…”. Also, pick Windows 98/ME compatibility.

Like

Fun, simple game

Play it on the hardest difficulty (petrol in my veins) for an extreme challenge

Dislike

Requires tweaking

Low-res game (640×480)

Limited maps

Verdict

Still one of the most addictive games out there if you can forgive its 1996-ness. The game can pretty much take you through a medium-haul flight and provide you truly addictive racing-combat fun.

Gameplay:  Excellent

Graphics: Great (70fps, but 640×480)

Work needed to get game to play: Minimal (5-minute)