Knight Rider 2 - The Game

PS2 review by Jim Smith - Monday 29th November 2004

My editor has a real sense of humour. I phoned him up a couple of weeks ago while I was suffering from a severe case of 'San Andreas ain't out 'til next week' blues and practically demanded that he send me something to keep me busy. And he did, in fact I think his exact words were something like I've got just thing for you Jim, I'll even throw in a freebie T-shirt. And then he chuckled to himself in that wicked little way that he does. I should have known, really...

So, who remembers Knight Rider?

"A shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a man who does not exist."

If that doesn't ring any bells, then you're probably way too young to have witnessed Knight Rider the first time around. Sure, it was over 20 years ago now and despite a constant rerunning on Sky One only rivaled in regularity by Star Trek repeats, it hasn't aged all that well. But where the 70s had an effortlessly cool appeal, the early 80s was an era of confused identity which in retrospect sets itself up for some serious lampooning as demonstrated by all the gags on the radio in Vice City. As such it's no surprise that when we look back on classic 80s TV series like The A-Team and Knight Rider we realize they were in fact crap, but at the time they were the most syndicated shows on the planet and spawned a global merchandising phenomenon that was only rivaled by Star Wars.

"Michael Knight, a young loner on a crusade, to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless. In a world of criminals who operate above the law..."

And then we have David Hasslehoff as Michael Knight, with his tight jeans, wavy hair, and his smooth laidback style that made women melt. It was a fateful day when a young head of programming at NBC struck upon the idea behind the Knight Rider formula. It seems he and one of his assistants were discussing the problems of casting handsome leading men in the series, because most of them can't act. Why not have a series, he mused, where the leading man didn't do much talking at all. The pitch was this: each episode would begin with this guy getting out of a woman's bed and saying "Thank You." Then he would chase down some villains and say "Freeze!" Finally the grateful almost-victims would thank him, and he would murmur, "You're welcome." End of show. In between, the car could do the talking. Brilliant.

Not as cool as it looks, trust me.

The series that made it to the air as Knight Rider was scarcely less ridiculous, but it was played with such a twinkle in the eye that viewers - mainly kids - made it one of the hits of the 1982 season. The pilot episode told the story of how a dying millionaire named Wilton Knight rescued a young undercover cop who had been shot in the face. After plastic surgery, officer Michael Long had a new face, a new identity (Michael Knight), and a new mission in life: to fight for law and justice in the Knight's incredible super-car, the Knight Industries Two Thousand, or KITT for short. And it was love at first sight between Michael and the car - a sleek, black, customized Pontiac Trans-Am, was impervious to attack, could cruise at 300 mph, could leap up to 50 feet in the air, and was loaded with such armaments as flamethrowers, smoke bombs, and infrared sensing devices. Best of all, it could talk, and in fact had a personality all its own - peevish, a bit haughty, but totally protective of Michael. He could summon the car when in trouble and it would come crashing through the walls to get him, as it often did. That was the kind of show it was.

Its deceased inventor had left behind a huge fortune to finance the crime-fighting, and a trusted associate, the suave Devon, to look after things. Based at a palatial estate, called somewhat grandly the Foundation for Law and Government, Michael (and often Devon) went forth each week, trailed by a large maintenance van that served as a sort of mobile command post. And there you have it, everything you need from a TV series - crime, cars and chicks. What more could you desire?

Anyway, that's enough history behind the legend of Knight Rider, what of Knight Rider 2 - the game? Well upon loading, the presentation comes across as quite reasonable. The catchy theme tune kicks in, and the intro generously cuts between TV series and in game footage to good effect, but predictably things rocket downhill as soon as the actual game begins.

The game's story starts with Michael and KITT taking a cruise along a deserted mountain road when, out of nowhere, a bunch of missiles attack. What follows is a most frustrating and weird opening level as the camera switches round to the front of the car and you drive into the screen, tapping left and right to dodge the multitude of almost-homing missiles that chase along the road behind you.

Tell me about it...

Next the camera slips back to its normal place behind the car and it's on to the obligatory jumping over carelessly placed logs using the turbo boost section. But be warned, the turbo boost doesn't boost you forward but vertically, with a slo-mo cut scene. Then it's on to using your laser to melt inconveniently huge blocks of ice, before using Knight Rider's patented 'ski mode' to flip up onto two side wheels and navigate between a string of huge boulders (God help anyone who's driving down this road in a normal car). These last few bits actually caught me by surprise, not because they were hard but because no manual came with my screener copy, so where KITT says "Michael, use your turbo boost to jump that log", I didn't know what button to press. If I slammed into that log once, I must have slammed into it a dozen times. And don't even get me started on that ski mode rubbish - how was I supposed to know to initiate 'ski mode' you have to tap R3 to the right?

Anyway, from here on in the game pads out into some standard evil genius conspiracy plot hokum about a super laser, but it's all just a load of old pulp nonsense. And the big surprise is that there's not all that much real driving to be done. You don't get caught up in cool cross-country car chases, nor do you get to dodge civilian traffic in crowded city streets. You do however get to dodge missiles, jump logs, laser ice blocks and ski between boulders. Sometimes you have to run away from a big helicopter gunship while dodging missiles and jumping logs and lasering ice blocks, and other times you have to laser crap robot drone things while skiing between boulders and dodging missiles and... well, you get the idea.

In-car Ski-cam...

Actually, one of the only times the game-play changes (even if only slightly) is when you have to use KITT's micro jam feature to open gates. This literally involves driving up to a gate, or bizarre looking tower, and pressing a button to unlock the gate. Um, and that's it - not very exciting by any standards but an ingenious way to unlock gateways without Michael having to get out of the car, thus saving an obvious fortune having to animate him. Come to think of it, I don't remember seeing one pedestrian at all, ever. That's the kind of game this is.

So, now we've got over the revelation that we spend the whole game as KITT, let's talk about him. Firstly, he handles badly - at high speeds he's incredibly sluggish, at low to no speed he can turn on a sixpence - way too sensitive - making everything seem too much like hard work. The weapons aren't much better either - the laser is weak and the missiles take way too long to lock on, so you soon find yourself in this endless cycle of driving around in small circles peppering your targets until they blow up in a rather lame manner. Unless you die first, of course, but since the game has an overabundance of recharge generators, I doubt if you will. I don't remember recharge generators in the TV series, but I guess that's just one of them things. I'm sure they were there somewhere.

However, one thing that I do remember fondly from the TV series is the witty banter that Michael and KITT shared. In fact it made the series, so imagine my disappointment when I realized that there's absolutely none of it here. Whoever they got to play the parts of Michael and KITT I don't know, but they really suck. And this is where the horrible truth becomes reality - Davilex couldn't even afford to get David Hasslehoff in to do the voice over for Michael Knight, which is bordering on sacrilege. It's like doing a Star Trek game and not getting William Shatner to do Captain Kirk, or making an Evil Dead game without Bruce Campbell - it's just a ridiculous idea. I mean, he may be considered a joke everywhere except Germany but at least Hasslehoff would have taken it a little more seriously than the people they hired in the end, and he might just have raised everyone else's game in the process. Well, maybe.

Please God, no...

But at the end of the day this game's a big old pile of rubbish no matter how you look it at. I don't need to talk any more about the bland graphics, the monotonous game-play or lame sound as I think you get the idea by now - and I think we all knew that was going to be the case anyhow. I can't even be bothered to tell you that the game has less than a dozen levels and can be completed in under three hours easy, but I'm sure that's no skin off your nose as I doubt you'll ever play this game anyway.

So in conclusion it's sad to see a series that many of us loved as kids spun into such a poor title, but that's just one of them things. Now all we need is a Blue Thunder game, an Airwolf game, an A-Team game (oh the glory…) and a Street Hawk title. Wouldn't that be cool, eh? Still, the one good thing to come out of having this game turn up was the T-shirt. It is XXL which dwarfs me, but my 5ft tall pretty little lady friend has adopted it as a nightie, which is kind of cool if you know what I mean...