* cro wanders off distractedly ( 1nsane )
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(}data{): we already knew that cro

I don't get no respect.

So what am I rambling about? I've been playing 1nsane, Codemaster's premiere online racing title. Developed by Hungarians Invictus, 1nsane takes the concept of off road racing a little more off road and a little more online, through Codemaster's proprietary chat client the Codemaster's Network. But more on that later.

I remember playing this game at ECTS and being mightily impressed with the version running at that stage. The game engine, especially on my video card displays terrain into the far distance and regardless of the amount of stuff going on on screen there's no appreciable slowdown in rendering. Being an off-road racing game it's all set outdoors, so the far distance is delineated with a band of fog, although the visual distance is so far that it's not really perceptible.

There has been a lot of hype surrounding 1nsane recently, mostly around the online component. EA tried online racing with Porsche 2000, but the servers are only in America. Grand Prix Legends has a really good online server, but it has some remote control flaws. 1nsane doesn't use the dedicated server model for online gaming, opting for a peer to peer model, and Codemasters have developed the Codemaster's Network (CMN) to support this. CMN is basically an IRC chat client that is integrated with the game so that you can carry on a conversation from within the game to those outside, and to provide a matchmaking service. CMN support is planned for all future Codemaster's online titles.

But you want to know what 1nsane is like, don't you. The first thing that springs to your attention while playing 1nsane is the music, which is very interesting and despite being constantly playing seems neither repetitive nor boring. Their are a number of different songs used in various parts of the game, with the music changing depending on what part of the game you are in. The sound effects have also been very well looked after, with the various vehicle sounds being very appropriate. I was struck when I first made it to the Truck class in Single Player, as with a decent set of speakers the Trucks sounded real, and included the treble whine you often hear when a truck revs it's engine.

As a single player game, 1nsane is not really that strong. You work your way through each of five class groups competing against the AI players to score points in each of the disciplines, spread across a number of landscapes. As you win each landscape, the others are made available for play. Once you complete each group, the next contains different landscapes and vehicles to drive, with probably the most amusing in the single player being the Truck class, where you get the choice of a 4 wheel drive Flat Bed truck, a 6 wheel drive Tow Truck and an 8 wheel drive Behemoth. With each vehicle you have the option of changing a number of settings, including suspension types, tyre type, braking power (both footbrakes and hand brake), steering lock distance, and the gear ratios. For example, if you know that the next track is mostly sand, hard suspension and soft tyres with a low ratio first and second gear followed by high ratios in the higher gears will give you the control and acceleration in the sand to get out of danger or get up sand dunes whilst still giving you a high top end speed for those all-important flag runs.

One thing I did notice as I was playing was that the AI players, especially in the later stages of the game and most especially in the Extreme Class are faster (even with the flag, which drops your top speed) and more manoeuvrable than you are, and no matter how hard you try you cannot get them to spin out. This may be down to my vehicle settings, but having played through the entire series I found this last class to be more frustrating than fun.

The game itself is a blast to play. The developers have gone to a lot of trouble to ensure vehicle physics is as close to the real thing as they can get, with a few licences taken along the way. For example, driving over a cliff and landing nose-first won't destroy you vehicle, but it will bend the model and make driving very difficult. The vehicle physics are accurate enough to make driving with one corner of the car collapsed a precarious affair as I found out whilst playing. You can also steer out of a roll if you start to tip, and if you're really good you can actually drive on two wheels. Make sure you use a steering wheel, preferably force-feedback though. While you can control all the vehicles using the keyboard, the digital nature of a key press doesn't really lend itself to controlling a car or truck

Doing too much damage will contort your vehicle into odd shapes and affect how fast you can go, as well as how much control you have. Luckily there's a repair function built in, although you will remain static for 3 seconds. The vehicles react convincingly with the terrain as well, meaning that sometimes you'll be barrelling in a straight line and hit a slight rise on one side and find yourself suddenly rolling over and over as the steering is torn from your hands (figuratively that is). Also included in the terrain are obstacles, some of which will stop you dead in your tracks and do significant damage if you happen to hit them head on - like trees and buildings - some that will slow you down or limit your control - water and ice - and some which no matter how hard you try you can't affect - sheep. Water is especially difficult to deal with sometimes as it not only slows you right down, but if you try and drive through too much water you will flood the engine of your vehicle, which kicks in the auto-rescue function, returning you to dry land after five seconds.

The developers have also included a number of not necessarily accurate vehicles, and invented physics to match, like the speeder, very reminiscent of that in Star Wars. It's very fast in a straight line but steers like a wet sponge. They've also included a quad bike, which is a blast, but it's like driving on ball bearings sometimes. There's also a police car, a rally car and a few others I'll leave you to discover yourself. All these vehicles are available in the multiplayer mode, although in single player I'm yet to find any of the more way out vehicles.

1nsane includes a number of game types to play around with, including a variation of Capture the Flag. Since this game is not a team game, Capture the Flag is more a case of getting the flag and returning it to a central point. You steal the flag from other players by running into them, although they (and you) have a grace period from when you first steal the flag to give you a chance to get away. If you roll over, repair or need rescuing you'll drop the flag which can be picked up again my driving over it. Another variant on the Capture the Flag mode is Flag carrying where you gain points for having the flag in your possession, and bonus points for making it through a nominated gate.

The other primary game types are based around racing through set gates, either fastest in order like a standard race, Gate Hunt where the player who drives through the highest number of gates out of a total of 30 wins, and the interesting and unique Destruction Zone. in this mode the aim is score as many points as possible by either parking on one of the scoring zones, or by ramming the other players. The faster you ram them the more points you earn. You still accrue damage by colliding with trees and buildings or by adverse interaction with the ground (ie falling off a cliff), but slamming into other players in this mode won't damage your vehicle.

What the single players game lacks in continuous and challenging game play it more than makes up for in the online side of things. 1nsane is the first title to use Codemaster's 'Codemaster's Network' architecture, based around a chat client similar in many ways to IRC but, as stated before, allowing chat between in-game players and those on the sidelines. There's also an inbuilt ranking system allowing you to judge other player's skill levels before deciding to join a game. Games are hosted by one of the players so lag and latency will vary depending on the speed of your game hosts connection. It's quite playable on a 64k ISDN connection since the network uses a form of round robin so that the host doesn't have to communicate with all the players all the time allowing for a surprisingly smooth gaming experience. The dedicated Codemaster's Network servers and login requirements also mean that your scores and online name are protected from other people pretending to be you, and lend themselves to ongoing Ladder Tournaments. I do think the lack of a dedicated server is in some ways a bad idea though, as if you want to play online and you only have a slow connection you have to find someone to play against. For the first two weeks of general release (until December 8 or thereabouts) there will be some players from Codemasters to ensure people get to grips with the game and solve any potential problems. One thing you should note is that 1nsane doesn't work if you have Zone Alarm installed, so disable it before you play.

The game type, map and vehicles available are all down to the game host, and games, for the most part, can be joined midway through. Playing against others online has the added attraction of competition against real people rather than programmed opponents, resulting on games that can be drawn out affairs. The first game I played using final code was against 4 other players in a gate hunt on the Egypt map. It was actually interesting as I used the same tactics in this online match as I did in the single player game - I let everyone else go racing after the more remote gates and I hung around near a gate I knew would be next in the cycle, sticking almost entirely to the center of the map while everyone else ran around trying to get each gate as it appeared. I had the slowest vehicle, yet I ended up with the highest score showing that a little thought can go a long way.

If you're still not sure, there are a couple of demos available, one including Internet and LAN capabilities so that you can try out the game.