Knight Rider - The Game

As a fan of the original 80s TV show, I had high hopes for Knight Rider - The Game. But unfortunately that's where they ended. In theory Knight Rider has all the key points to make a great game; you drive around in KITT pulling off turbo jumps and wheelies, chasing down the bad guys and bringing them to justice. It's got pretty good  graphics and a pretty decent 3D version of David Hasselhoff to boot! 


However the controls are confusing and far too responsive at times, so where you might want to make a gentle curve on a race track you end up skidding out of control, often ending up doing a complete 180 degree spin. Pulling off a wheelie seems to be a mixture of skill and luck, as once you hit two wheels you've got a 50/50 chance of veering off in a different direction, usually resulting in falling off of the narrow platform you're trying to drive across.


I only played the first mission - the training level - before I gave up. I couldn't even bring myself to complete that. Racing around the circuit was repetitive but bearable and once I'd mastered tapping the left and right arrows to make corners, it was quite fun to race around with KITT. I almost gave up when set the wheelie challenges because of the difficult controls and the strange habit KITT had of veering off at an angle when you hit two wheels. But the killer was the third challenge which was to scan some objects in the environment. While this in itself shouldn't be too much of a challenge, the training mission completely forgot to tell me which key I needed to press to scan. 


Not a problem I thought, hitting the escape key to get the controls menu up... But hang on a minute, I've only got two options; resume mission or quit. What? So I can't even see what the controls are from the menu? What a crappy training level that doesn't actually tell you the controls. The developers just assumed that you'd check the controls at the start menu and then memorise every single one. That's 17 keys to remember before you even start playing the game! My memory's good but not that good.


Maybe I should have persevered with the training level once I'd checked out all the controls again, but I just couldn't put bring myself to try it again in this play through. Perhaps for die hard fans who can adjust or overlook the control system there might be a really good game hidden beneath the surface, but for me this is the end of my adventures with KITT and Michael Knight.