	Knight Rider The Game 2
	Developer: Davilex Publisher: Koch Media Release Date: Out Now Players: 1	Words By:
You’ve got to hand it to Davilex. They certainly have dogged determination in their locker. And let’s hope they have a truckload (or should that be semi-load?) of bouncebackability too. Sequels to good games make sense, but a sequel to Knight Rider The Game? Blimey! – now that’s real dedication to a cause that is. Knight Rider is doing the rounds on satellite TV (most things are), but even so anyone under the age of 18 or so probably hasn’t got a clue what Knight Rider is….Gamers of an older persuasion will know however, and probably be sniggering at me for getting stuck with the review for the second game of the rather naff 80s TV series….. Starring a younger David Hasselhoff (who was the old, tall orange guy out of Baywatch and a pop “legend” in Germany because they actually thought his music was cool), Knight Rider was about the mysterious Michael Knight, the millionaire owner of hi-tech Knight Industries, and his computerised talking car K.I.T.T. – It stands for Knight Industries Two Thousand apparently. The trouble with Knight Rider, even at the time, was its inherent crapness. David-Michael HasselKnighthoff (he had trouble distinguishing himself from the on-screen character so why shouldn’t I?) was a bouffant-haired twerp who was about as tough as Ross Geller or Chandler Bing. His boss, Devon Miles was a camp toff, and the star of the show (K.I.T.T., the talking wondercar) was in fact no more than a black Pontiac Trans-Am (a truly terrible automobile in real life) with blacked-out windows and wheel trims. K.I.T.T. also had a laconic attitude and a camp voice…. (more campness?), and lacked any decent Bond-style machine guns, rocket launchers or any fun gadgets. What it did have was the ability to jump in the air (or “Turbo Boost” as it was called for some reason) and drive on two wheels (or Ski). K.I.T.T.’s best bit was definitely its cool red light on the front that scanned from side to side and made a cool ‘whhhooooom’….. ‘whoooom’ noise…… (you probably had to be there)… The ‘Campaign’ is series of missions (you can replay missions individually once they’re completed, although for the life of me I can’t think why you’d want to) and to kick things off, one sunny day on the way back from a holiday in the mountains, Mike & K.I.T.T. get attacked by a volley of missiles (larger than the combined stocks of the US & the USSR at the height of the Cold War). So far - so unbelievable. But the way this level plays is even less plausible; You drive K.I.T.T. out of the screen (that’s towards you, with reversed controls) whilst trying to avoid the missiles by jumping with “turbo mode”! (the R2 button). The original Knight Rider game had you jumping around some levels like a platform game at times, and this new opening level seems so reminiscent of a Crash Bandicoot level that you wonder why Davilex don’t just do a cutesy platform game and be done with it… Thankfully K.I.T.T. does have a few new toys under his bodywork (so it’s not very faithful to the TV series then), and now apart from scanning things (drive up to something that looks like it could be useful and hold down L2), “Turbo Boost” jump and “Ski” (go on two wheels in order to fit through narrow gaps or ‘tiptoe’ across narrow bridges), the supercar now has a laser beam (woohoo), a plasma gun (gasp!) and guided missiles (crikey!) (although you’ll wonder what kind of cheap hardware they’re guided by). Okay to the “plot” for KRTG2: Devon is the boss of F.L.A.G. (even more initials) or the Foundation for Law And Government (so that should be F.F.L.A.G. really then) a covert organisation who seem to use Michael Knight’s money to catch bad guys. They operate out of a Semi (no, I don’t mean a ‘partial’, for some unknown reason those wacky Americans call 18 Wheelers that sometimes) that acts as a mobile HQ and base for K.I.T.T. In the game, you play and control K.I.T.T. (who’s accent seems to have changed a lot since the TV series, and become distinctly English), and drive Michael (Michael unsurprisingly isn’t voiced by the real Hasselhoff either, but it’s pretty easy to sound like the too-nice, patronizing dweeb) around, seemingly doing all the work for the mouthy one, who calls you ‘pal’ and ‘buddy’ a lot - so much in fact that I think that like arch-enemy Garthe and myself, you’ll want to kill him before long too… So let’s recap; there’s Michael, K.I.T.T., Devon, Garthe (bad alter ego brother of Michael), Goliath (Garthe’s truck), Bonnie (some nice-sounding girl who give you lots of info and upgrades K.I.T.T from time to time) and K.I.T.T’s alter ego, K.A.R.R. (a really bad car, don’t know what the initials stand for, sorry). Oh, and a remote control helicopter that attacks you, probably known as C.H.O.P.P.E.R. to his friends. Note to self: If only I’d worked harder at school… maybe I’d have got the San Andreas review instead… The levels seem to be mostly strangely deserted desert roads through canyons that end for no apparent reason at huge industrial installations. Some of these have massive underground complexes underneath them that you drive around in – not a bad guy in sight – just loads of tracked robots of various sizes and some laser beams to avoid. Imaginative level design or what? – There really is nothing for your brain to get excited about - even the original Knight Rider game had traffic on the roads, but it’s gone missing now, probably to appear in a better game somewhere. The game engine allows for little in the way of detail, and apart from some nice smoke and speed blurring effects, there really is nothing for your eyes to get excited about either. Knighthoff only gets out of the car once, and you don’t get to control him even then, although you naturally have to save his irritating ass, because crap-Bond-style, the only time he gets out of K.I.T.T. he gets tied to a conveyor belt on a crushing machine… If only you could have let him get squished, or saved him, then run him over, it would have almost made it all worthwhile… The game is short, but not short enough. You’ll tire of its inane design, odd controls and unhelpful camera positioning quickly, and after driving, shooting, avoiding stuff and giggling insanely for a while (it’s one of those games) you’ll long for GTA, or Driv3r, or anything else really. Sometimes you’ll have to replay a level because the time limit ran out before you figured out exactly what to do or got fed up with shooting the dozens of stupid robots (think they stole them from Terminator 3), but second time you’ll get it and that’s that. It last about 3 or 4 hours, tops, and that’s if you’re patient enough to see it to the end, and explore. A lot. So that’s about it. You drive somewhere, scan something, shoot something, drive somewhere else and then chase something (a car, or possibly a helicopter) for a while (should you do a big jump, you’ll get a cinematic, GTA-style cutaway view). That’s KRT2 pretty much summed up. It’s old, it’s tired and it’s just not good enough. With games as good as GTA San Andreas around this sort of cheap tie-in won’t do anymore, and even allowing for rose-tinted specs and cult/kitsch appeal, this should be ignored at all costs. Extras consist of strangely detached TV clips of stunt drivers doing strangely unexciting non-stunts in Black Trans Ams, a quiz and a few piccies of K.I.T.T. Knight Rider - The Game 2 (to give it its full title - thank goodness they called it that to avoid confusion with Knight Rider – The Jigsaw Puzzle 2) might be worth a look if you’re a 30-something and really need a fix of 80s crap, but otherwise it’s impossible to recommend. 80s junkies will be glad to know that there's a Miami Vice game on the way (also from Davilex), so let's hope that it's better than this. The only other plus point for some gamers might be that there's no blood and no one dies (apart from possibly the bad guy Garthe, and that’s not clear) so it might be a good one for the kiddies? – But, and this is a big but: if you deprive them of good games like GTA San Andreas and buy them this instead, you know they’ll only grow up to hate you for it, and come into your bedroom one dark knight brandishing a copy of Knight Rider The Game 2…

Best Bits
- K.I.T.T. looks nice and shiny.
- Unintentionally funny.
- It’s cheap.
- It’s easy.
- It’s over quickly, so you can take it back and get something else.

Worst Bits
- Some non-intuitive controls.
- Simplistic and repetitive missions that all feel a bit daft.
- Apart from K.I.T.T., the graphics are crap.
- It’s Knight Rider, so you’re likely to be associated with David Hasselhoff.
- Pathetic arch-enemy turns out to be Michael’s evil double - with a goatee.
- It’s short.
- SO many acronyms (yeah, I looked it up).
- It’s a bit K.R.A.P.P.


by: 'Big Tony' Bolognese