Now that the Dreamcast is the ripe old age of one, developers have had plenty of time to get used to tinkering with all of its internal cogs, flywheels and steam valves. The result is that just about every disc slipped onto the DC spindle spins out some gorgeous graphics. Red Dog's visuals aren't in Soul Calibur's caliber, but it does have some excellent work in it. Whether you're driving through a cavern bubbling with lava or leaping over a fetid toxic dump, the game has rich colors and great textures. And with the VGA adapter, everything looks crisp and vibrant.
Red Dog itself is little more than a 128-bit updating of the classic coin-op Moon Patrol. Players take control of a tricked-out space buggy and speed around on alien landscapes shooting just about anything that moves. There is a semblance of a plot updated by briefing screens before every new mission, but on the whole the story is mere wallpaper. The controls, however, are several degrees more complicated than a Williams quarter-muncher from 1982.
Players use the analog stick to steer the Red Dog, with the left and right triggers acting as the brake and gas, respectively. The game's central, and seemingly unavoidable, problem
is that aiming the Dog's guns is also done via the analog stick. This makes moving in one direction and shooting in another quite difficult, if not impossible. And a fine movement of the crosshairs is never easy to pull off. By holding down both the left and right triggers, players can enter a sort of strafe mode where the vehicle moves laterally, but this is not much of a solution in tight spots.
The rest of the controls, however, are fairly intuitive. The A button shoots the main cannon and also gains a missile lock. A shield button brings up a small defensive barrier that can be moved around to deflect incoming shots. And throughout the game, players will discover helpful drones, which increase their firepower by adding guns, rockets or an electrical attack.
The Red Dog has different armor and weapons layouts that can be increased for the single-player mode by completing contests in the challenge mode. Such contests include, among other things, tests in driving, jumping, aiming and cornering. The better a gamer does in the challenge mode, the more powerful the Red Dog in the single-player campaign. It's a clever idea to make one mode dependent on the other, and we enjoyed that variety of gameplay when switching back and forth between the two.
For players who prefer their action against a friend, Red Dog supports an excellent selection of multiplayer modes. In addition to the standard deathmatch, there are six other styles of play for two to four gamers. "Knockout" is a sort of last-man-standing mode, where players begin with a pre-set number of lives and then attempt to do each other in. "Bomb Tag" gives one sucker a bomb and the others scramble away, "Suicide Bomb Tag" gives the bomb to every sucker except one, "Stealth Assassin" gives one player invisibility but little armor and "King of the Hill" is what it sounds like.
There are other multiplayer modes, and a cool cheat section that can unlock helpful tools like unlimited ammo or an everpresent sidearm bot. Records aren't stored for cheaters, but some players may need the help towards the end of the game, which gets quite difficult. It's not a revolutionary game, but there is enough color and variety of enemies that we never grew tired of it. Some of the challenges are ingenious, while others are just a chore to fulfill. But we enjoyed enough of Red Dog to recommend it to action fans and top breeders alike.
Bottom Line: A pretty, action-packed title that doesn't do anything new, but doesn't do anything wrong either.
