Racing and rolling

By Russell Baillie

Rollcage ****

PlayStation

(Psygnosis)

Here's a racing game to drive you up the wall - and if you're really good, across the ceiling and down the other side, too.

That's one of the stunts that makes Rollcage - a sci-fi rally racer which finds its own loopholes in the laws of physics - a game like no other.

Well, one other. There's a definite influence of Wipeout, that standard-setting PlayStation futuristic-speedfreakster also from the same developer.

Like Wipeout, Rollcage races through its own otherworldly territory in vehicles produced, apparently, by a fevered petrolhead imagination.

It also employs weaponry to make the game a combat scenario as well as a racing one and it comes armed with its own state-of-the-art electronic soundtrack.

But where Wipeout's operative term is "whoosh," Rollcage offers "wahoo" in its head-spinning mix of vertigo and dizziness.

Your vehicles are basically four large sticky tyres with a rotating cockpit attached.

So when you launch yourself into a high-speed somersault off the trackside embankments, you always land the right way up - not necessarily facing the right way, although an "auto-correct" function allows you to reorientate yourself quickly.

With simulated speeds of up to 500 km/h or so, it means you can loop across the tunnels of ceilings and get quite some altitude if and when your racer loses contact with terra firma.

Once in the air, you can't steer. It's just a matter of holding on until you land, with your stomach to follow shortly after.

While the vehicles themselves are fairly indestructible, the surrounds aren't.

The game does a good explosive fireball should you feel the only way past a trackside building is actually through it.

And the debris you leave in your wake can be tactically employed to slow down your five rivals. So can a range of weaponry including homing missiles, shields and electric lassos, all helping to keep things constantly colourful. The visuals are kept eye-catching with a brisk frame rate, another echo of Wipeout's smooth style.

Although this review is based on a limited demo disk, the full game apparently offers a variety of terrains on different planets (presumably with variations in gravitational pull) amounting to 20 or so courses.

A neat combo of wacky racer and sci-fi action, Rollcage's fuzzy logic makes for a unique and addictive bit of race'n'rumble.

* Games are given a star rating of one to five.