Vigilante 8 created the turning point for the vehicular combat games, but was it enough to keep it afloat?
There used to be a time when games totally had their soul and purpose and weren’t being made in a close timespan to meet the deadlines. During the 90s, the gaming scene had its total boom, in both innovative and technological advancements that were brought in by many companies. The drastic shift from 2D to 3D was enough to draw more people in, but there was another aspect to that change: more creativity was surely to pour in. During the 2D era, games tended to be more linear, except for some outliers such as SEGA’s Sonic the Hedgehog or Nintendo’s Metroid. But once the 3D environment took place, developers started looking at everything a tad bit differently.
Adventure games could lead to big exploration areas, or shooters could be freer in terms of movement. One of the genres that got the best out of 3D advancement was obviously the racing and driving games. Instead of commandeering a car in a 2D space, with both left and right, players now had to be aware of their surroundings and act according to the car’s behaviors. One of the first games to employ the new mechanics was Namco’s Ridge Racer, which had a huge success in the long run, spanning 8 games throughout the 90s and 2000s. However, the one that brought more realism to the table was Gran Turismo with its catchy “Real Driving Simulator” phrase. Every car had its own personality ported from real life and players were given the freedom of choice of creating their own path to success.
Now, creativity comes into play once the market gets bloated with a bunch of the same games being produced over and over again. Just like how racing games tended to focus on realism with the creation of Gran Turismo, other developers wanted to steer away and give a more arcadey feeling with their creations. Arcade racers being done to the time’s end, it was time to bring out the forgotten genre with vehicular combat. As the name implies, vehicular combat focuses on players modifying their cars to fight against the opposition, whether it’s good or bad. The first media form to include any sort of vehicular combat is the Mad Max, believe it or not, but even then weapons were rare to find on vehicles in Mad Max.
Undoubtedly, when it comes to vehicular combat games to feature weapons latched onto the cars, Twisted Metal comes to mind as it pretty much was the leading niche genre game. It felt right to unleash some havoc on baddies or just to get your stress to a non-existent level. However, while Twisted Metal was making lots of fuss, and obviously loud noises on the battlefield, there was another vehicular combat game that went under the radar, and people are a bit downer for not discovering it sooner. Vigilante 8 actually did things better than Twisted Metal, and it is very saddening to see that people won’t notice it unless it is pointed out.
To briefly mention, Vigilante 8 is a game that came out almost 27 years ago for PS and N64. It was made by a subsidiary studio of Activision, Luxoflux, and was published by Activision with middling-to-high reviews at the time. Although some critics were struggling to go through the cheesy animations and the theming of the recent past, general consensus of players was very high, and it can be still seen today if you decide to bring up Vigilante 8 in a discussion group. This is no joke, if someone remembers playing this game back in the day, they will defend it as being absolutely a blast to play with their dear life, I would even include myself in that group.
So what is the fuss with Vigilante 8? What is it that people cannot get enough of? Well, to simply put, it is fun. Yes, the thing we apparently do not look forward to seeing in our games nowadays is completely being ruined by competitive aspects, loot boxes, or unnecessary rules to go through before “enjoying” a video game. Vigilante 8 is one of the titles where you can simply bring friends in, or enjoy it solo, without thinking too much as it is intended to be a simple, fun game. Although, it would be nicer to focus on the story of Vigilante 8 if you are playing to beat it.
The story begins in the alternative 1975, where the US is on the verge of an oil crisis and an- oddly enough- an Australian is trying to get rid of oil reserves, so that the US would have to get an arrangement with his oil company, OMAR. He hires up a few bandits and calls themselves Coyotes, however, he comes against the oppression of Vigilantes, who try to fight against the Coyotes. Since the game is set in the 1970s, most of the cars are based around that time, and funnily enough, weapons too. The gameplay is based on the exploration of the maps, running around your targets, collecting weapons and powerups, and fighting against the opposition of your choosing.
Vigilante 8 is one of the games that allows you to play as both sides, and developers actually went further ahead to create an individual ending per character throughout their story, it was around these times when being a baddie also meant extra content and lore dump to the players’ faces, which considered to be a positive attribute rather than a nuisance to deal with. In short, Vigilante 8 has a lot of content for you to chew through, and most likely it won’t stop being fun after the main quest mode either, as the game allows more secret characters, maps, and cheats to go through after finishing.
There are some parts that Vigilante 8 left in our minds due to how classic and unforgettable they were. Yes, the maps are extremely well-polished and have very good design choices, but when we are talking about the game, cars and the people behind them are more interesting to talk about. Not only do they represent the time they were in, but how they fit the surroundings and being aware of what they are fighting for gives more realism to the flow of the story. While Coyotes, who are trying to ruin the plans of the government, are more sided with edgy profiles, Vigilantes are more likely to be sided with patriotism, like truckers or farm owners.
When it comes to environmental storytelling, Vigilante 8 got that casually covered too, not to mention it also included destructible entities. Buildings, pipelines, gas stations, you name it, everything was destroyable and I cannot stress enough how they would actually be helpful in getting rarer items or allowing you to make a swift escape. The more you dive deep into Vigilante 8’s core, the more you learn about the physics, maps, lore, and gameplay. There is actually more stuff to talk about than meets the eye, such as map bosses, character-specific special weapons, and even a power trick to deal huge amounts of damage.
These all sound very good for 1998, but why do I bring it up now you might ask. You see the game, along with the genre, was dead for quite a long time. You don’t see much of vehicular combat being talked about on cared enough so a developer would start working on a new IP. Studios like Evolution, Criterion, and Luxoflux have already been either dissolved or completely wiped and the rest of the driving games are just trying to be hyper-realistic, like Forza Motorsport, Asetto Corsa, or Gran Turismo. The arcade sides of driving games have been pretty much for dead for a long time, and games like Vigilante 8 were unfortunately always exclusive to the consoles back in the day. There were these two games by the name of Interstate ‘76 and Interstate ‘82 for PC, but we don’t talk about those. Now that the developers are defunct, there is no way we could enjoy these titles without emulation, right?
There was a brief time when Activision came back to revive the series, but it was such a small time period that you might have missed playing it altogether. Vigilante 8 was ported over to Xbox Live Arcade for Xbox 360 with overhauled graphics and active online gameplay support. It was never released as a physical copy and it was a limited-time event, so, there is no other way to play Vigilante 8 other than grabbing an actual copy of the game and playing it on old hardware. Well, for that, I’d say good luck because finding a clean copy for both the first and second games can be tricky and would cost you a lot, just like how people are cashing in with old Nintendo games for older systems.
That would usually leave the second option for people who still want to enjoy those games, and it is emulation. Although today’s computers won’t have a hard time emulating 20-year-old software, emulation can be tricky to land on. This is where Vigilante 8: 2nd Offense’s PC port comes in. Starting around 2020, this project has been in the works and finally hit the 1.0 version mark and it is looking fantastic. Ported to the Unity Engine, the PC version of this cult classic is now playable, and it’s even free to try out. I will be honest, despite being a huge fan of the series, I never noticed a project that was trying to revive the game for the new generation of hardware.
Vigilante 8: 2nd Offense is the second game on the series, not sure why they decided to port that game instead, but it is better than not having any. Unlike some of the other projects that port games over to other game engines- looking at you, Grand Theft Auto Definitive Edition- this project caught me off-guard as it gave me hope. The original engine is beneath the Unity Engine, however, it is not interfered with by any means, meaning cars, graphics, and gameplay feel exactly the same as in the original game.
Along with how authentic this port is, developers actually went further ahead and overhauled the graphics for the game with new menu styles, character models, and a new online mode where you can either work with or against people around the world. As I said, the Xbox Live Arcade did allow people to play online but it was such a limited feature that you can find barely anyone who participated in those matches nowadays. Talking about the modes, Vigilante 8: 2nd Offense’s quest mode allows you to play through the campaign and see the aftermath of the first game, while arcade mode lets you set up scenarios of your own.
One little thing to note is, that developers announced that they won’t be adding the cars from the first game, however, maps from the first game are accessible. It is quite a shame to not be able to use the initial cars released for the franchise as they also had their own personality and special weapons to play with. Vigilante 8: 2nd Offense also includes a fair share of characters and their special weapons, but they are not as fun as in the first game in my opinion.
The PC port of Vigilante 8: 2nd Offense is still far from being finished though, developers state that there is still testing that needs to be done with additional content to be added, however, you can join their Discord server to set up multiplayer events and share feedback. One thing that I am still not sure about is whether this project is official or not, as Activision is being featured on the GitHub page, but Activision themselves never talking about the port whatsoever. Nevertheless, we should enjoy playing while it is here, I am pretty sure it will bring a lot of memories back for people who used to play Vigilante 8 back in the day.
