Insane 2 was recently released and is looking to bring some love back to a racing sub-genre that we don’t see touched too often these days. Off-road racing games are rare, and even when they do come out, sometimes they really aren’t all that off-road. I remember a few “off-road” racing games where the trails were so flat they might as well have been streets. Luckily for true off-road racing fans, streets are tough to find in Insane 2.
In Insane 2 you will trek across various types of terrain in different parts of the world. You’ll find yourself racing through the eastern plains of Africa, deserts of North America, mountainous regions inEurope, and even the icy Artic. Each region has its own hazards you need to deal with like the water pits in Africa or just straight up flying off the side of a mountain inEurope. It feels like there was a lot of detail put into the terrain. Even on events that had multiple laps, I couldn’t 100% predict the terrain. If you’re going the wrong speed and hit the wrong bump in the terrain, you could easily lose control of your vehicle if you aren’t careful.
There are lots of different vehicles to choose from that consist of 4x4s, SUVs, pickups, buggys, and a few larger trucks. Each class of vehicle has its own advantages and disadvantages. More so than that, each vehicle in each class has different stats; so there are a lot of options when it comes to getting comfortable with a vehicle. As you win races you will receive upgrade points that you spend to upgrade your vehicles durability, speed, and handling. You will also get points that will unlock additional skins for you vehicle.
It’s very easy to get comfortable with one vehicle and stick with it, but this will definitely cause you hardship as you play. You need to pick vehicles depending on the type of terrain you’re racing on. I found that most vehicles lower to the ground have a speed advantage over the taller ones. That’s great until you find yourself stuck in a water pit or muddy ditch. In the linear race types this may not be a problem because you can prepare for these hazards, but in some of the other race types where the event is totally open you may find yourself losing because you couldn’t traverse that last ice patch quickly enough.
The first event types you’ll come across are lap races and knockout races. These race types should be known to anyone who has played a racing game in the last decade, but I’ll explain for the sake of explaining. In lap races, you have a set amount of laps to make it around the track. First person to make it through all laps wins. In knockout a time limit is set. At the end of the timer, the person in last place is knocked out of the race. This repeats until there is only one vehicle left.
I have to admit that while I was playing these two event types I was a bit bored. Instead of racing, it really felt like I was battling it out with the terrain. The AI in Insane 2 is not the brightest I’ve seen. Once you’re past them, you’re past them and if you don’t mess up, you’ll win. The terrain was the only challenging part of lap and knockout races. These events turn into you watching your speed around certain areas, playing close attention to the terrain and what your tires are doing.
That being said, all is not lost when it comes to the single player experience. You’ll probably play lap and knockout events for the first hour and change of Insane 2, but soon after that you unlock the event types that are actually fun to play even with the daft AI. The first event you get your hands on after the standards is Jamboree. In this event there is no track; the entire event is open and you can drive wherever you want. There are checkpoints all over the map that light up at different times and your goal is to get through the checkpoints first. For every checkpoint you go through you get a point, and the first one to reach the set amount of points wins the event.
The reason the daft AI really doesn’t matter here is because it’s more about you battling it out with the terrain to get to each point as fast as possible. Sometimes the next checkpoint will be within your vision, and other times the next checkpoint will be clear across the map. In fact, all of the fun event types are the ones where the map is open.
In Persuit, a helicopter shines a light on the ground and when you’re inside the light you collect points. The car to collect the most points wins. In Greed, boxes parachute to the ground. Different boxes have different values, and the vehicle that collects enough boxes to reach the goal value wins. Capture the Flag is fun because the AI is more aggressive since they all have a single goal: get the flag carrier. You can pick up the flag off the ground or tap another car to steal it. In Gatehunt, there are a ton of activated checkpoints on the map, but only the first car passing through each gate gets the credit.
All of those event types I just mentioned were both fun and challenging to play; they really turned my thoughts on Insane 2 around. There are actually more event types available as you progress but they are unfortunately broken up with lap or knockout races between them. As you complete events and competitions you will accumulate points that will unlock more competitions and vehicles.
This game would be a lot more fun if people were playing multiplayer, but if you try to get a lobby going you’ll be there by yourself for a while. The visual presentation is great, level of detail in the terrain is fantastic, and the variety in game play is wonderful. That being said, however, I don’t think the $29.99 price tag is truly justified. The dim AI really does take a lot of the potential fun out of the game, leaving me feeling that a $20 price tag would be more reasonable for this mostly single player experience. Insane 2 did a lot of things right, but if they would have paid more attention to the AI this game would have gone from good to great.
