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3DNow!™ Plane Crazy Review

Developer/Publisher Inner Workings/SegaSoft	Est. Street Price $29.99 (US)
Minimum System Requirements 166 MHz Pentium class computer 16MB of RAM 2MB video card	Recommended System Requirements K6-2 266MHz or higher 32MB of RAM 4MB 3D accelerator

Graphics & Animation

Plane Crazy offers a Direct3D graphical splendor almost equal to that of Rage's Incoming! Blasting through each course you'll notice the wonderous variety of textures used in the game. Water and lava textures and animation effects are rendered with exquisite detail with a vivid brillance. Plance Crazy definite falls under a more cartoon style of graphics as Inner Workings used just about every color in the spectrum. Transparent effects are nicely taken advantage of in the weapon blasts as they swirl and home in on the unfortunate target. Animation in Plane Crazy seems pretty standard. There isn't too much of anything extraordinary to expect from airplanes. The dynamic lighting certainly does help to add the icing on the cake to the graphics and animation. It make the planes seem like they are really flying through all kinds of hell and havoc. Plane Crazy's graphics are something you don't want to miss.

Sound & Music

Sound effects and music is where Plane Crazy really falls short. First off, their is hardly any music whatsoever. The are a couple of short hick-like harmonica riffs played at certain key points in the game to accent whether or not you won, but other than that, zilch. Music can dramatically spice up a game's excitement and mood, making things more interesting. There is no music while flying through each course, and the engine sounds get really dull within a short while. Although Plane Crazy features A3D support, the sounds effects are just to loud and boisterous. Imagine pitching your plane's nose downward every so slightly and then suddenly have a steep diving noise rip through the monotonous sound of your engine. Sounds effects are ill timed and don't seem to truly reflect the action in the game. However, Inner Workings didn't fail in this catagory completely. There are voice-overs from some hick comentator who lets you know of what he thinks of your performance from time to time. What makes these events nice is the added static and imperfections in the voice clips to reflect what it would sound like through a stunt plane's radio. Crash and explosion effects are nice too. Even though they are pretty standard, at least they are not as hindered as the sound effects for the planes themselves. With Plane Crazy you'll probably find it to be more fun at lower volumes.

Gameplay & Immersion

It is easiest to descibe Plane Crazy as Mario Kart 64 gets wings. Plane Crazy is meant to be dazzling fast and furious fun, and that's what it is. Although there are only a mere six main courses to race on, each run has a wealth of secrets and short-cuts, even more so than other games of its' type. This adds to the replay value of Plane Crazy quite a bit. Another nice bonus to the gameplay is the financial earnings you get when you play in Championship mode. With the money you win from the races you can upgrade your plane with new wings, engines, and all sorts of gear. Plane Crazy also offers four "Rookie" courses for beginnners. While these are not as elaborate as the main courses, they are ceratinly a nice place to start for those not aerial adept. However, Plane Crazy isn't all fun and games, it is actually quite a difficult game to get the hang of at first (even on Easy mode). Probably one of the game's biggest failures is outlining the courses enough so that a pilot can know where the hell they should be heading. This fault is most apparently in the Sin City Run course where the dark of the night and the surrounding buildings easily confuse the direction of the track. Still, once you get familiar with the courses and the handling of the planes Plane Crazy really grows on you.

3DNow!™ Support

Plane Crazy was one of the first titles announced to have 3DNow!™ optimizations. By putting the 3DNow!™ instruction set to work for accelerating general three-dimensional calculations and operations, directional lighting, and auto-tesselating dynamic lighting, Plane Crazy takes serious advantage of the technology. Unfortunately, the game has no benchmark feature to statistically show the increased performance the 3DNow!™ optimizations give. However, the 3DNow!™ utilization can be toggled on and off making it easy for anyone to see the difference in the games smoothness. Important Note: At this time Plane Crazy has compatibility problems with DirectX6 which causes dramatic slowdown in the game's framerate, so make sure you are using DirectX5.2 to see this game in all of its' glory. Click here to read the specifications of the test system.

Overall

All in all Plane Crazy is a very solid game. It is not without its' faults, but they don't hinder the overall impression of the game. 3DNow!™ support is very apparent and seems well done. At last, a 3DNow!™ game that comes with the optimizations out of the box :)! While Plane Crazy won't win any awards, it is certainly the most insane fun you'll ever have in the air.