Your Mother Drives Cars In Hell!!

Since Jess has commandeered the Xbox while she furiously feeds Psychonauts the bomb, I’ve finally exorcised the demon known as Knight Rider: The Game. Lucky for me, it’s a pretty short game, but that didn’t stop it from frustrating the crap out of me and making me yell profanities. Still, the unintentional hilarity of the bad dialogue/acting and one actually entertaining level made it more of an evil imp than a full fledged, sphincter throated Mephistopheles. I can honestly say I had a little fun playing the game, though the “ending” left much to be desired.

As I said before, the biggest problem is that the car handles like a boat. Another major annoyance was the way the levels were set-up. You would usually start by driving for 2 minutes down a long desert road to a compound where you needed to scan several buildings. Getting to each building would require some “car platforming” as KITT jumped from rooftop to rooftop and drove on two wheels across narrow pipes suspended from building to building. After all this dubious manuevering, something would usually happen that required a timed escape. The worst case of this was when I set off an alarm that gave me about 20 seconds to drive up a narrow winding ramp and jump off a building. Each time I fell off the ramp, I had to start at the beginning, drive 2 minutes through the desert, scan the buildings again… It was great.

Another thing that nagged me was the simple fact that if Michael would just get out of the car it’d make things a lot easier. For example, take this scenario :

Instead of Michael simply getting out of the car and taking the stairs to apprehend the suspect, KITT had to leap up two ledges and then jump through that window in the upper right corner. There seems to be an unhealthy relationship between man and car going on here…

What kept me trudging through the terrible gameplay was the promise of more bad diologue and cornball acting! I was never disappointed, especially when Michael Knight’s evil twin Garth showed up driving KITT’s evil twin, KARR.

Most of the story is told with text and still photos with the occasional cinematic. When I finally heard Garth speak, I realized his evil was more than just a goatee. Listen for yourself, if you dare.

Another interesting feature of the game were the slow motion camera shots when you jumped over certain obstacles; a precursor to the Bond Moments in Everything or Nothing. What made these so interesting was that they happened regardless of whether you successfully made the jump or not. I was treated to many blooper reels where KITT was romantically skidding across the desert on his hood or plummeting into a ravine.

After the one certifiably entertaining level in the game where you race through tight tunnels to try and escape Garth’s lair, I fought one of the lamest boss fights ever. The goal was to destroy KARR in a one on one demolition derby. This was easily acheived by simply parking KITT on the other side of downed electric wire and watching KARR try to drive through the electricity over and over again until he died.

In a strange way I’m glad I had the opportunity to play this game. Platforming with a car was a unique experience that I would never have sought out myself and the cheesy production and 80’s synth music were genuinely amusing. So let this be an encouragement to all you Secret Satan victims who have yet to exorcise your demons.