Amiga ~ Lotus 2 Review

Overview

Lotus 2 was one of the best ever sport car racing games around the early nineties. So good in fact, it was rated number 5 in the Acorn Users Games Review magazine 1993/94 and remains as one of the most highly respected driving games amongst driving game fans.

Any mad driving game fan today who had once or does own a Commodore Amiga is most likely to know the Lotus series.

But was the game really that good?

Gameplay and Controls

In the gameplay, you drive as fast as you can against the clock to make it to the next checkpoint to gain more time until you reach the finish line. While not extremely exciting, it is still highly enjoyable to just drive around. The controls include automatic or manual transmissions, which adds a greater variety to gameplay. This way, you can learn to play the game both ways. Manual is set to default to encourage a more active racing style rather than just holding down the accelerator in automatic which is rather boring. During your races, you will encounter many obstacles particularly the opponent cars. You aren't really racing against them, they're just there to for you to avoid and make the game more fun. There is a points scoring system where there is a counter on the top right of the screen. As you drive along, the points accumulate. I'm not sure how this works, but I guess it's based on your average speed and how clean your driving is.

The most fun part of this game is the 2 player option. You can even bump into each other, which makes it even more fun!

8.5 out of 10

Graphics

The quality of the graphics overall are excellent. The road, scenery and opponent cars move along at a very smooth frame rate. The roadside scenery is very plain. Mostly just 2 colours, but it still looks good along with the roadside objects which are also very plain. However, the roadside objects such as the trees are really just repetitive images being plotted down every now and then. It would have been much interesting if there was more variety in those roadside objects. The background scenery is just a rotating image whenever you turn, working very well with the game.

4.5 out of 5

Sound and Music

This intro music is just fantastic! The moment it hits you when the Lotus logo appears on the screen, you feel the sports car racing nature of the game. It actually makes you want to listen to the whole thing before you even start playing the game.

There are even some pretty cool tunes on the pre race screens.

The sound effects are quite realistic for this type of system. Mainly you'll be hearing the repetitive droning sound of the car engine. If you turn, there's a skidding sound. And if you hit an object, a little crashing sound. There are some cool speech sounds while you're racing. Like when you make it to a checkpoint, there will be a "CHECKPOINT" and a beeping sound. This sort of gives you a proud feeling of progress and makes you want to keep on racing.

In one stage you get to drive right past these intersections with a big truck rushing through it. If you manage to go right under it, there'll be a "YEE HAW!".

So that repetitive engine sound is a little disappointing and lets the game down a bit. I think I'd prefer to listen to some good music to pump your racing adrenaline than the repetitive car engine.

If the game had good racing tunes along with slightly improved sound effects, the sound and music department would have been perfect.

4 out of 5

Cars, Track Design and Options

There are 2 cars in the game. The Lotus Elan and Lotus Espirit. You can't choose which one you want to use, but instead you upgrade from the Elan to the Espirit after you have made it through enough of the game. The Espirit is faster as you might have guessed. I would have preferred it if you could have a range of Lotus cars to choose from. It would have made the game so much more appealing to play.

The selection of tracks is excellent. They have pretty much covered every single terrain where roads exist. The forest. The city. The desert? The fog? You can clearly see how creative they were in choosing what tracks to add into the game. The tracks themselves are simply just the occasionally left and right turns with up and down hills. They increase in difficulty as you go along in the game to keep it challenging for you.

Options included are 2 player split screen and link up to another Amiga.

I wouldn't bother with the link up. I'd prefer to stick with the split screen. The options in terms of the actual gameplay itself... there aren't any at all. Just race one player or two players in the one mode that's available, which is racing on all those tracks and advancing onto the next. A definite put down to the game.

3 out of 5

Longevity and Replayability

The game in the options department is severely lacking which in turn severely limits the amount of time you would like to spend on the game in the very long term. The main reason to continuously play this game would be to just complete all the tracks. To make that easier, there is a password option to continue on any track you left off at. If you've already finished the game, you would only want to come back to beat your old score which is rather boring seeing you'll have to play the whole game again from scratch. Still, there's a good chance you would play the game again just for the fun of it on a regular basis.

The 2-player option is the only thing that makes this game worth replaying if nothing else if left to do. As you know, it is always fun to play against human players for a change and beat them!

3 out of 5

For: a manual transmission option and also made default to challenge us, fun 2 player mode, great graphics, great music, cool speech sounds, nearly all sorts of terrain used where roads exist

Against: repetitive engine sounds, graphics are plain, can't choose your cars, no options to change the gameplay, hardly any replayability value for one player mode

Conclusion

So now we come to this conclusion. Was Lotus Turbo Challenge 2 that good? Judging from the review, the game did have excellent gameplay, graphics and sound, but it was lacking in the options and longevity value. Somehow, I feel that this game was slightly overrated. It must have been the name of the game, which made it so popular.

So is Lotus 3 better than this game to make it the best driving game of its time? Or was it another attempt by Gremlin to chalk up some more money by the use of the Lotus name?