Sure, a lot of people have been complaining recently about the bad port
of Namco's arcade hit "Cybersled" to the PSX.  But, I figured as I went
out to purchase it, how bad could a PlayStation port of a great game
possibly be?
 
Then on my third game I got to the second-to-last tank before the end of
the game (at "normal" difficulty).  And I've only played the arcade
CyberSled three or four times before, a long time ago!
 
I played it more the next day, and after a few more tries I could get to
the very last tank in the game, a behemoth with all attributes maxed
out, who comes straight at me shooting wildly, finishing me off with
little ado.  That's when I decided to return the game to the store; I
don't feel like spending ten dull minutes getting to a guy on a power
trip who wastes me within seconds (and the game is over when you die once).
 
Here are a couple of thoughts I have on it after a few hours' worth of
playing:
 
- The graphics are TERRIBLE.  It's hard to believe the same people who
made Ridge Racer also made this.  Cybersled in one-player mode is
certainly playable, but sometimes you "bump into" walls that are clearly
a few feet away from your tank, and sometimes when you get close enough
to walls you can "see past" them to the other side.  When you bump into
a wall repeatedly, you see pixellated "sparks" coming from a point which
is neither on your tank nor on the wall.  Cybersled in two-player mode
(the screen is split into two half-height displays) is so jittery as to
be almost unplayable.  (You can turn off the texture-mapping, but it
doesn't help speed at all.)

- The gameplay is entirely different from the arcade game.  There is no
strategy here.  On the first two games I played, I died on the first
round -- until I decided to play it as a "Doom" clone rather than as a
tank game.  The computer tanks tend to sit in the same place if they are
not in a line-of-sight with you (if you sit and wait, you can hear them
fixing dozens of missiles at the wall -- where are they getting so many
missiles from?)  If you duck out from behind a corner, fire a missile,
duck back behind the corner, and repeat as necessary, you will beat all
but the fastest little tanks.  The fast tanks (such as the blue one) are
even easier to beat -- just sit in one place, and the little tank will
zip up and sit right in front of you, where you can easily wear him down
to nothing with your machine guns.
 
- The voices are cheesy, the movies that play as each opponent tank
comes out are poorly-done (there's a lot of artifacting in the video),
the music that plays during the load periods is slowed down
inconsistently so it sounds like a mess, and the pixellated "explosion"
you see when the enemy tank is destroyed is very unsatisfying (the
polygon explosion is gone).
 
- There are no breakable walls to crash through (not that I found,
anyway), no half-height walls to drive over (again, not that I found),
and the "fog" is done very poorly.
 
- The controls are a mess.  Configuration #1 means the control pad moves
you forwards/backwards and sideways (slip), and L1/R1 turn you.  It
would feel a lot better for L1/R1 to be slip and for the control pad to
turn.  Configuration #2 means the control pad controls your "left tread"
and the action buttons control your "right tread" (L1/R1 are fire), but
it's very difficult to use the action buttons as a control pad.
 
- I wonder why they made the five new tanks (which aren't really
impressive; one of them is a wimpy pink thing driven by a woman named
Chevrolet or something like that) only human-playable if you enter a
code to get access to them?  After all, they went to the trouble of
entering in graphics and text for them and their drivers...
 
In short -- In one-player mode, the game is a poor shadow of Doom.  In
two-player mode, the game is too jittery to enjoy.  If you're not a
total Cybersled-head, ignore this game; it will dim your hopes of the
PlayStation's future.  If you ARE a total Cybersled-head, ignore this
game anyway (at least until after you've had a chance to play it for a
while before you decide to purchase it); it will disappoint you.  On the
other hand, if you need to practice your Doom-style sliding back and
forth to dodge, this might suit you.
 
Oh well; back to the store with this one.
 
 
--
_/_/_/   Be insatiably curious.                 Je ne suis fait comme aucun
/_/_/    Ask "why" a lot.                de ceux que j'ai vus; j'ose croire
_/_/                           n'etre fait comme aucun de ceux qui existent.
  /    Brian Kendig         Si je ne vaux pas mieux, au moins je suis autre.
 /    bskendig@netcom.com                                       -- Rousseau
     http://home.netscape.com/people/brian/