'Roadsters,' 'Star Trek Armada' Go Where PC Games Have Gone Before

By AARON CURTISS

June 29, 2000 12 AM PT

Time was, a racer like “Roadsters” for Sega Dreamcast would have made my day. While still a nice little diversion, “Roadsters” falls into the great, wide middle of Dreamcast games. One nice thing the game has going for it: Tracks that snake and wind like a plate of spaghetti.

The eight tracks in “Roadsters” each have three variations, so players can race through the same scenery over and over without getting too comfortable with the actual course. Tracks twist through London’s Docklands, hug the Panama Canal and cut tightly against the canyons around Hoover Dam.

The scenery is fabulous. Tooling through the Docklands, for instance, players can read the neon signs of crummy bars and check out roadside advertisements as they cross back and forth over the Thames River at night.

And each course changes as players race it. Disasters from earthquakes to meteor showers befall the courses during the race, making the second and third laps different than the first.

All of the cars can be upgraded as players win races. Despite that, “Roadsters” is plagued by unreal aspects. Cars never seem to take too much of a beating, even as players bash against each other in crowded turns. I slammed my make-believe Mitsubishi against so many walls that I should not have been able to drive it. But it kept zipping along as if everything were fine.

Racing addicts should find “Roadsters” another solid Dreamcast title with courses challenging enough to keep players occupied for hours. Other players looking for a broad library can do better. For nutty, no-hassle racing, try “Speed Devils.”

“Star Trek Armada”

For those who crave the rush of sending a starship into battle, “Star Trek Armada” offers the opportunity. And it makes it all seem so humdrum and monotonous, not even hearing Capt. Picard utter his famous “Engage” command makes the battle sequences half as exciting as they seemed on television.

A real-time strategy PC game set in the universe of “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” “Armada” allows players to command Federation, Klingon, Romulan and Borg fleets as they jostle for power in a postwar Alpha Quadrant. With voice-overs provided by actors from the show--including Patrick Stewart--the game gets high marks for staying consistent with “The Next Generation’s” look, feel and history.

But that doesn’t save “Armada” from being a tired strategy game that offers nothing new. Players start their missions with the standard objectives: Build this or that ship or space station in anticipation of an attack from this or that bad guy. Once the pieces are in place, the shooting begins and players send their newly built ships off to war.

“Armada” does a decent job of tying the missions together with a pretty good story. Players can select to play as any of the four races in the game, but the story makes most sense following the default order: Federation, Klingon, Romulan and Borg.

Game play comes straight out of the real-time strategy design book. Players build space stations to supply troops and research for their campaigns, making sure to send scouts around the area to watch for enemy incursions. Each race has its own set of ships and stations, but they all do pretty much the same thing. The Romulan Dilithium Freighter, for instance, is the same as a Borg Dilithium Collector--both gather, duh, dilithium.

One bummer: Game play takes place in a two-dimensional realm. But outer space has more than just one axis. It would have been really cool to have a three-dimensional range of movement, making the game more challenging and more interesting. Oh well.

As real-time strategy games go, “Armada” is average at best. But the fact that it unfolds in a universe most Americans know at least a little about might make it more accessible than games that require an understanding of new digital cultures.

“Star Trek Armada” requires a Pentium 200 with 32 megabytes of RAM, 600mb of available hard-disk space and a graphics accelerator card. The publisher recommends a Pentium II 266 with 64mb of RAM. Multiplayer play requires a network or Internet connection.

“Toobin”

My neck is red enough that I have participated in the, uh, sport of “tubing” more than a few times. It’s a pastime enjoyed mostly by rural folk in which participants sit in an inflated automobile inner tube and float lazily down the river. We tubed a lot as kids in the Sierra-fed rivers of Central California, but clearly it’s not the sort of adventure one attempts in the mucky concrete scar charitably known as the Los Angeles River.

So I figured “Toobin” for Game Boy Color would be a banjo-picking flashback to my youth. But either my entertainment standards have risen--not likely--or “Toobin” is one of the lamest games I’ve played in a long, long time. And, trust me, I play some true dreck.

The point of this pointless waste of time is to guide the main character, a yahoo named Bif, as he tubes through various rivers around the world, collecting old soda cans and passing through flags to collect points.

Along the way, everything from sunken branches to alligators block Bif’s path. Players have to either paddle around them or knock them out by throwing a soda can.

Yawn.

The control on this game is annoying and tough to master. Players paddle by tapping the A button repeatedly, much as they do in track and field games. But to turn, players also have to tap the directional pad multiple times. It’s tedious, especially as players try to slip through a checkpoint.

Graphics are underwhelming, even by Game Boy Color standards. As Bif gets close to other objects, he becomes difficult to see. That makes it nearly impossible to ensure that Bif’s tube is oriented properly. So players spend a lot of time bumping into things they shouldn’t. And there’s not enough differentiation between good things and bad things in the river. They all look like blobs.

Finally--and this is a quibble--am I the only one who finds it idiotic that Bif would be tubing down the Amazon or the Yukon in the first place? I’m all for whimsical games with a fair amount of nonsense, but “Toobin” is nothing but nonsense.

Aaron Curtiss is participating in a management training program, where he currently serves as assistant to the senior vice president of advertising. He has no financial dealings with the companies he covers. To comment on a column or to suggest games for review, send e-mail to aaron.curtiss@latimes.com.

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Essentials

Roadsters

* Platform: Sega Dreamcast

* Publisher: Titus

* ESRB* rating: Everyone

* Price: $50

* Bottom line: Good enough

Star Trek Armada

* Platform: PC

* Publisher: Activision

* ESRB rating: Teen