








What 4x4 - Offroad Racing offers you is a challenge for your imagination. Imagine your car is a lean, mean, all-terraining machine, the opponents as ruthless speed-freaks and the landscape diverse, rugged and awe-inspiring. Imagine the buzz from your speaker is actually your monstrous engine roaring... If you're able to manage this, 4x4 is actually a pretty nice game.
You've got to drive your sturdy 4x4 through wild and harsh country, covered with mud, snow or otherwise tough-to-traverse stuff. Apart from your 17 opponents you've also got to avoid hitting to many obstacles lying on the road (such as boxes, tires, skulls etc.). If you don't manage to do this some parts of your car will break down; it could be the gearbox, the radiator, or some mysterious component. If that happens you can either drive on and hope for the best or stop and fix it. Off course the last option will take some time and some of your adversaries might overtake you. So you've got a tactical choice to make: will I try and make it to the next checkpoint (which is a mandatory stop) or do I stop now for repairs.
That's what makes 4x4 more then a simple pound-the-gas racer. You've got to make choices about which tires you put on your car, how many gallons of gas you take along, which engine etc. When you start the race and pick your car you get a chance to stock up on supplies and select adequate material for the race you're planning. If you don't have mud-tires, you're going to get stuck in the mud and loose many seconds. They're pretty heavy though, so you won't reach top speed on them. Choices, choices, choices...
As said, even though the graphics might not dazzle you and the sound may be of poor quality, the game play is pretty decent. Although it will never make my it into my top ten of favourite games, I've had my bit of fun playing 4x4. A 3 it is then!
Technical note: You steer the car with the arrow keys, and use the Insert key to accelerate. This might seem a bit weird, but if you've got NumLock off, the '0'-key from your numerical pad acts as insert as well, so you can drive the whole game with one hand. Another thing is that I had to crank down the speed quite a bit in DosBOX to make playing the game enjoyable.
