POD SpeedZone

The Good
After the brilliant first part for PC, this game was my main motivation to buy a Dreamcast. The first part is an absolute classic with a detailed game world and background story. Unfortunately you won't find any of that in the second part: The whole background story is literally three sentences.

The PAL release title suggests the game's new direction already: This game is designed as a multiplayer title, especially for playing via internet. And this is were the game really shines.

The track design still resembles the original game, though this time it is a different planet (Io from the first part was transformed into something entirely different if you remember the ending sequence). You will drive through alien worlds which were previously occupied by humans again, and all the industrial environments are starting to crumble when the planet is infected by the virus. With all the design references to the first part it's quite obvious though that a completely different development team was working on this successor.

The controls are fluid and very arcade oriented, and overall the handling just feels good. The same is true for the sound effects and the (electronic) soundtrack which match the game's atmosphere very well.

On the tracks you can often find multiple paths: You can try to take a shorter, but more risky route, or you can take the easier route, but will loose a lot of time. At least if your opponents don't crash into the obstacles or fall down the pits themselves. These are the make-or-break decisions during the game and make the game so much fun to play against other people.

The Bad
I told you about the lack of a detailed game lore already, but another point also stands out immediately: The game contains a ridiculously low amount of different tracks. If you are playing offline it's only 5 tracks, but at least a 6th track can be unlocked when going online at least once...

When talking about playing offline: The single player mode is called "Arcade". Everything you can do in there is to select your car and a track, and that's it. No tournament mode, no nothing. Calling this "Training" would have been way more fitting. This almost entirely disqualifies the game as a single player game: It's just boring to play the same few tracks again and again.

It should also be noted: In contrast to the first part there's no balancing system which would allow you to catch up again after a major driving mistake. Whether that's a good or a bad thing is up to you to decide.

The Bottom Line
This game was a real disappointment to me - back when I bought it I didn't have an internet connection, and when I finally had one the servers weren't online any more.

However this massively changed when a reimplementation of the game server was released in 2017 and it was suddenly possible to compete online again. There are regular online sessions again, and it's always a lot of fun (and retro feeling) to join them!