Cyberspeed was the very first Playstation game I ever played. In that
regard it holds a bit of a nostalgia factor with me, because
Playstation ended up becoming my favorite system. It was only replaced
as my favorite when PS2 came along. Despite this, Cyberspeed really
isn't a very good game, especially today. But the wacky TV commercials
on the game make it worth a purchase just to see them.
As the title suggests, Cyberspeed is a futuristic racing game. You can
choose from 8 ships, which have different stats, like speed, thrust,
mass and shields (more on that later). Each ship has it's own character
driving it (although you never see the character while racing), and
each ship represents a different country. All the ships play
identically, though, and they don't have any special weapons or
anything of the sort to make any one ship different from another. It'll
probably boil down to you picking which ship looks the best, and they
all look very different, despite playing the same.
The way Cyberspeed is different from other racers is you're attached to
a beam in the center of the track. This means you can go up and down
and all around 360 degrees around this beam, which helps you avoid
obstacles (of which there are a lot, especially in the later races).
The controls in the game are simple but a little tough to handle
sometimes. X accelerates, Square fires your primary weapon, R1 and
Square fires your missiles, L2 boosts. The directional buttons move
ship around. There's no braking in this game because the beam allows
you to take a corner without crashing. But you'll still need to adjust
your ship to enter the corner at the right angle. A red meter on the
right side of the screen tells you how well you're cornering. One
problem with the controls is if you accidentally press L1, your ship
will turn around and you'll be facing the wrong way. You can press the
button again to turn back the right way, but by that time it will have
cost you a place or two. Other than this problem, the controls are fine
and work well.
You can choose from a few different race types. There's the regular
race mode, which is your simple racing mode where you race in all of
the tracks, one after the other against 5 other ships in order. You
must place in the Top 3 to move on to the next race. But if you race
well, you can also unlock a bonus track where you race one on one
against a particularly tough opponent, to unlock some goodies. The
other modes consist of a Quick Race mode, where you jump right in, pick
a ship and track, and race a standard one-off race against 5 other
ships. The only other race mode is Time Attack, where you pick a ship
and track and then race one on one against another ship, trying to get
the best time possible. There's no other gameplay modes and every race
is pretty much the same.
The only goal is to reach the end of the race in first place. To do
this, you must master a number of techniques. It's impossible to just
win a race outright just by going pedal to the metal. Instead you have
to use a variety of relatively simple techniques, like shooting,
boosting, cornering and avoiding obstacles. To keep your enemies behind
you, it's necessary to shoot them. Actual damage to your ship doesn't
make your ship slower for the rest of the race, but it can cause you to
spin wildly and come to a stop, which usually sets you back about 3 or
4 places in the race. The amount of damage you can take before spinning
out is determined by how high your Shields rating is. You can also
boost, but your boost doesn't last long if you're not good at
cornering. And you also must learn to use your few boosts wisely,
because using them all at the beginning will get you the lead for now,
but by the end of the race you'll be in last place. Because of the
balance and overall difficulty of the game, races tend to stay close.
It's hard to win in Cyberspeed. Not just hard to win, but hard to even
place in the top 3. The game is a little too difficult for it's own
good sometimes, which effects the game negatively. For an early PS1
game, Cyberspeed looks pretty good. The ships are detailed, with all
distinctive looks. The tracks are colorful, but nothing else really
stands out about them. Overall Cyberspeed looks about average for a
game that came out in 1995.
Cyberspeed's sound is decent, but nothing special. The ships don't make
much noise, which is disappointing considering they look like they
should make a lot of noise. The other sounds in the game consist of
weapons firing. A nice touch as far as the missiles go is a little
beeping sound goes off when someone fires a missile at you, and it
becomes faster the closer the missile gets to your ship. The other
weapon sounds are kind of like muffled Star Wars laser sounds. There's
an announcer in the game that says things like "behind you". "two laps
to go" and "look at him go!" during gameplay. He's pretty annoying and
he doesn't sound right in the context of the game. Overall the sound is
okay in Cyberspeed.
The best part of Cyberspeed are the wacky TV commercials that play
after each race. They're funny little spoofs for futuristic products.
There's a scientist who demonstrates his brand new products, although
the products all seem to have one fatal error in them. There's a
company that delivers pizzas in 30 seconds while using a laser to cut a hole in the window where they deliver the pizza, and the same company
also happens to be a window repair company. This weird stuff is just
the tip of the iceberg. And while these commercials may not all be
funny, they're goofy enough to be enjoyed by anyone who's into that
sort of thing. The commercials may be good, but the actual gameplay is
not as fun. It's okay but the game has a few too many flaws to be good.
Either way though, if you were to find this game in a bargain bin, it'd
probably cost less than a dollar. And for that price, it's worth it
just to see the goofy commercials.
