Vigilante 8 Review

November 12, 2008    Category: Wii Gaming, Wii News    No Comments »

For all of the talk about Activision seeking “exploitable” franchises in recent days, here’s one release that wouldn’t seem to follow that business plan…at least not on the surface. Vigilante 8: Arcade is a mashup remake of sorts of Vigilante 8 and Vigilante 8: 2nd Offense, a pair of PS2/N64/Dreamcast car-combat titles that debuted before the turn of the century and had not been touched by developers since. While the built-in thrills of the car-combat genre remain intact and the $10 price intrigues, little else has changed in the last decade or so — more for worse than better.

Series aficionados will take heart at the integrity of the core game mechanics and universe, which are likely just as they remember it from the original games — as in Twisted Metal, you drive around a handful of diverse arenas, dispensing various projectiles in an effort to be the last man (or rather, vehicle) standing at the end of each match. Charged shots and upgradeable vehicles (via collectable scrap pieces) set Vigilante 8 apart from its now-faded genre competition, along with a 1970s setting packed with references to disco music, the oil crisis, and UFO-loving hippies.