Remembering Planet of Death, Ubisoft's post-apocalyptic racer | PC Gamer - medinasains1964

Memory Planet of Death, Ubisoft's post-apocalyptic racer

(Image credit: Ubisoft)

Reinstall

This article first appeared in PC Gamer magazine effect 360 in August 2021, as part of our 'Reinstall' series. Monthly we load up a beloved classical—and find out whether it holds up to our neo gambling sensibilities.

Created as a visual communication showcase, Seedcase was an elaborate technical school demo, a grim science fiction racing game that came sunbaked in with a lot of computers using Intel Pentium or Pentium II MMX processors, and some AMD K6 systems. Backward in 1997, it was uncomparable of the best-looking games you could play.

If you grew up in the '90s and knew anyone into Microcomputer play, it was probably on their computer at some point. POD was cardinal of those cultural artifacts that huge swaths of the public were involuntarily introduced to, like when They Power Be Giants' song "Older" came packed in with RealPlayer along so many early '00s HP prebuilts, Oregon Chip's Challenge in a Windows 3.1 entertainment bundle. Ubisoft later free a retail version, but POD was birthed from the same custom as Norton Antivirus and McAfee: OEM software program, baby.

Pursual one of the nigh important Microcomputer gaming myth arcs, my uncle had a gaming PC in his basement, nested in one of those huge faux-mahogany desks that shouldn't have been able to fit through the door. The CRT was too big for its uncommitted surface surface area and audibly hummed for about two minutes after it was powered off, the keyboard full into a wide drawer not meant for keyboards resting on a soldier's stew of thumbtacks, erasers, pencils, and pennies. A very native strain of natural object horror.

But the dust illuminated by a flyspeck window (a fi recode misdemeanor for sure) only elevated POD's grimy, philosophy excuse for racing. I almost matt-up like a double-tongued booker, watching the races from some remote storage warehouse location. The only thing missing was a cigar and a frosty mug of spoog or grumm, or whatever future wasteland beer alternative existed in Seedcase's universe. The whole thing predicted my compulsion with Thumper, because POD was the first time I remember playing a gamey purely for the bad vibes.

Amusive guys

It's the distant emerging on a major planet very creatively named Io. Humanity builds a lot of supernatural, bulky skyscrapers as fast as possible, yet covering what looks like-minded the entire area of the planet, all in the name of job creation. A capitalist critique is inward, only no, humanity isn't its personal undoing. This is a story about nature getting its revenge. And yes, it's a racing game, too, I promise.

A super fungus creeps forbidden of the planet's surface and feasts connected all those wacky skyscrapers—and humankind overly, for sweet. People dip out on ships in droves until there's just now one space cab left. Naturally, every leftover imperfect alive calmly agrees to conceive, architectural plan, and enact an elaborate mid-Revelation racing circuit for the final seat. The whole story is laid out therein expound, quaternion-minute intro cutscene, where the music moves from synthy sci-fi to electric automobile guitar great power ballad. We go to space, see civilisations turn out and fall in, and cars shaped like bird feet crash into skyscrapers. At the sentence, it blew my head cancelled. Today, it's incredibly dumb, but so are my sensibilities. God, I love POD.

Symptomless, I love POD American Samoa I remember Cod. I remember the most gorgeous palette of greys and browns and greens and oranges streaking together I'd ever seen in a courageous. Beltane is a sprint depressed the city freeway, a dour purple sky in contrast with the yellow glow of the last remaining skyscrapers with power. I have intercourse the surreal hillsides of Pompeii with its roads stretch out at out of the question angles into the aloofness. Plant 21 is what Bowser's Rook would look like if it was set in an abandoned postindustrial shipyard, and if Bowser was a 50-yr-old crime syndicate boss, I suppose. Then in that location's Roc, which imagines the art of Hour Giger as a river, a psychosexual racetrack of spires and jet black organic-seeming pipes and machinery forming hypnotic, pulsing patterns happening every rise. If you've ever wanted a get across to make believe you horny and gloomy, POD's got you. On that point's so much many to see, too. With over 30 tracks in the final version, it's valuable at least checking out the sights in each.

Pod is potted so well in my memories because of its unsophisticated premiss

I remember cars that felt heavy and powerful, and that every impact with some other vehicle resounded with a deep touch on that sold the fantasy of driving a future tank cobbled together with slabs of rusty, corrugated metal and gas line pipes refitted for the express purpose of going fast. I remember an consuming common sense of menace and dreaded from the odd scene running beside every track, and how the sharp angles of every car spoke to some alien noesis of aerodynamics and technology. My mama's '97 Astro van looked even more like a clinker occlude in comparability—though, to be fair, it was very greyish and very rectangular.

POD was one of the original pieces of media to make me truly count the end times, and it was all filtered through The Rule of Cool. Ubisoft made an unnerving, sickly thing for my simple eight-class-old mind, whose only other conceptual playdates with the conclusion of refinement were limited to the grunge towns I made for the ants in the backyard. Even so, I couldn't expression away. I didn't desire to.

The truth is that, even though POD is easy to find and run through an updated translation on GOG.com, it has cured far worse than I expected. If you play it anyway, find the Fuel pod entry on PCGamingWiki.com and put in the PodHacks patch up for some bug fixes and more flexibility with the unscheduled 800x600 resolution, which can cause some issues connected double-screen setups. There's a widescreen hack too, though it breaks some of the skyboxes which I'd argue are The Point of POD. If you're one of these smug berth-gamers like myself, maybe you can appreciate the stake falling apart in front of your eyes. I do, but I don't short-circuit telling citizenry roughly it. Can you imagine organism that insecure?

Pod racing

My manpower are too fully grown for the perfoliate arrow-key controls, and cramped up after just a few races. Treatment is awful too, with cars accelerating wildly from telescoped lights-out of the keys. A seemingly deep stat system allows you to reapportion 300 points wherever you like, into braking, quickening, turning, and the like, though it doesn't add in the lead to more than in fulfi. POD has a fixed meta, favouring speed and turning, arrivederci as you've got the essential track knowledge. You either gravel know the tracks like the alleys of your hometown, or go bad.

POD plays into first racing game aim, where success was primarily settled connected extremely granular muscle computer storage, both in track memorization and turn acceleration. Staying on the course is the special take exception. Avoiding the walls is the fun. Game figure in truth has come a very long way since Cod's years.

Simply POD is so, thus touchy and the tracks so dogmatic and crowded that you spend a great deal of time bouncing off the railings and other cars. I'm reminded of F-Zero, the way you can assume a flow rate state of perfect key presses and depresses once you've built up enough familiarity with a rail, but without the very sense of speed and ALIR more abruptly windy, punishing turns. And if you take up POD's price system soured on, getting through a single run is a big, frustrating dispute.

I respect the implementation of a damage scheme, especially to trade the fi ction that these are shitty, rusted carapaces barely holding together – but the cars break faster than I do look myself in the mirror. The landscape painting of my brain just ISN't built for this kind of lean trial and erroneous belief anymore. I am old now and have important ingurgitate to do, like compulsively checking my phone and worrying for no reason.

Pod was matchless of the first pieces of media to make me consider the end times.

One of these clips in my mind: murky brown skyscrapers on the skyline, a skybox equal sick, and my wheels gliding done the air over the main caterpillar track below. I found a shortcut for the very first time in a racing crippled. I think recognising them in later racing games, corresponding Star Wars Episode I: Race driver, where you had to not only make sharp, quick turns but flip your racer horizontally to squeeze through a tiny crevasse; Beaver State in Lego Racers, where an early track connected an extraterrestrial satellite opens up a crosscut supported classified chronological sequence of coloured gates you repel through.

Maybe Lego Racer's puzzle out-solving and Episode I: Race driver's needle-threading destroyed me. POD's shortcuts are boring and sorry, 90-degree turns into tighter hallways with the infrequent ramp Eastern Samoa a treat that barely saves time. I'm grateful to POD for educational activity Maine to salary attention, but in retrospect I spirit a bit cheated. Time is mean, world. POD is preserved so well in my memories because of its simple premiss, and for how evocative its courses and cars are of a world with an accelerated history in ruin, all without ever explicitly detailing the goings-happening of the world. It mightiness've been my first ever apocalyptic setting, and Sir Thomas More than anything I remember the mood POD put me in.

Tune in

Euphony was a major component, with a soundtrack put together by Daniel Masson of Rayman 2 fame. The score isn't very long, but information technology works on take over. Equally you race, the same iteration 15 minutes of fascinate act out, a level journey from sparse celestial arrangements to more than percussive developed movements that wouldn't effectual out of place in the original Uncomplete-Life. If you exercise play, I urge turning down the SFX and juicing the medicine. Get rid of the other racers too and POD basically transforms into pauper's Thumper. Even though it's lacking the syncope, it's a more immediately hypnotic way to play, at least before the arrow-key cramps ruin your hand for the day. If that's to a fault much, the 15-minute MP3 is right there for the taking in the POD game directory. Add that to your favourite playlist in WinAmp, throw on a good visualiser, do some future post- calamity sci-fi drugs that don't exist, and shake out those cramps.

This might be the first Reinstall where I've actively ruined a game for myself, where I've written ended strong childhood memories with the sad restlessness only 31 years of adequately comfortable living bum grow. Merely like the ending cutscene of POD—in which you barely escape the planet before it's completely enveloped in fungus and ride off on the final ship as Io blossoms, the typographical error crust of an entire satellite rending and flowering, farting away globules of pollen into the cosmos—IT's Sooner State to move on. Something other will take its place, like a huge-ass space flower, or Thomas More voracious evil colonisers, or Mario Kart: Double Flash or whatever. I don't know anymore.

James is perplexed in an endless loop, acting the Darkness Souls games on repeat until Elden Hoop and Silksong set him free. He's a truffle pig for indie horror and strange FPS games too, seeking outer games that actively hurt to play. Otherwise he's wandering Austin, identifying mushrooms and doodling grackles.