Spectacular crashes are what NASCAR racing is all about, and Daytona delivers. |
When gamers decide it's time to show off their racing prowess, they have a couple of multiplayer options. Split-screen, two players can compete against each other, or as part of a field of ten racers. On the Internet, up to four players can race together (no computer cars can participate in online races). Certain track elements are removed during all multiplayer matches, but these are all minor elements (like the horses on the Sea-Side Street Galaxy track) and their absence doesn't detract from the fun of the game. At its best, Internet gaming elevates Daytona USA to a whole new level. Playing against three other gamers is great, and the feel is very close to that of the arcade's linked-cabinet races. At its worst, Internet gaming is the fly in Daytona 2001's ointment.
Internet gaming is not everything it should be, at least not right now. Although lag seems well within acceptable limits, stability is a huge issue, with players being dropped from games constantly. At current stability levels, players are likely to be dropped from as many as half of the games they start. Hopefully, this is an issue that Sega can address on their end, but in the meantime, players interested in racing online will need patience and dedication to persevere.
Also on the subject of online play, this is the second of Sega's major online-enabled games to forego broadband support (Phantasy Star Online being the first). Regardless of whether or not it enhances gameplay, broadband support should have been incorporated simply so that gamers who connect via high-speed connections could join in the fun.
No more pop-up! The view distance is amazing, especially after the poor Saturn port. |
Players who aren't interested in or don't have access to online gaming are going to be disappointed by several of the tracks. Although the three Dreamcast-specific courses are terrific for competitive races online (or even in versus races), they're fairly humdrum against the computer, with relatively little interesting roadside detail to engage the player. Circuit Pixie is especially dull in anything but a multiplayer competition. Not having any Daytona 2 tracks is also a major disappointment!
The menu system is overly cumbersome. Each time the game is loaded, or an Internet game is selected, a prompt pops up that asks the player to load information off a VMU. The player must press a button to move past this notice before actually selecting the save, wait for the save to load, then press another confirmation button to get past a message telling him that his save has been loaded. This process ends up being repeated several times consecutively if the player is loading up Daytona 2001 specifically to play an online game. Exiting a net game is equally laborious, with a number of confirmations required simply to disconnect from the Internet. Obviously, pressing a button isn't hard work, but the process is overly involved and becomes tedious very quickly, given that the steps involved are simply delays to actually playing the game.
As a final issue, control is a mixed bag. Control with the basic Dreamcast pad is touchy, to say the least. The car steers with the analog stick and the analog triggers control the gas and break. Despite all this analog, through, the steering feels very digital. The car auto-straightens when the controller is released, but veers right or left very quickly with even gentle movements of the stick. It is possible to tweak these characteristics somewhat in the options menu, but it still isn't perfect. Using a steering wheel, on the other hand, the game controls like a dream. Serious gamers will want to think strongly about investing in a wheel if they plan on putting in a lot of hours on Daytona 2001.
Daytona has always been about power sliding through tight turns, and it still is. Don't expect to do much power sliding until you get the hang of manual transmission, though, since down-shifting is a prerequisite for pulling off those tight skid turns that will cut seconds off your time. Although this has always been the case in the arcade Daytona, the original home release on the Saturn relaxed the control so that even newbies using automatic transmission could pull off some power slides. Daytona 2001 returns to the much truer arcade-style control, at the expense of that initial accessibility.
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