Leadfoot is a very fun and compelling racer, probably the most fun game that
Ratbag has ever made. It is more arcadish than any of Ratbags other sims,
and yet that actually makes it more fun overall, since it means fewer race
ending crashes, and more close quarter bumping and bashing with the other
competitors than would be allowed in a rigorously uncompromising full-on
sim. The tracks are a nice diverse assortment, with plenty of nice little
challenging turns and a few off camber bumps and jumps, to keep you on your
toes.
The A.I. drivers can sometimes be a bit too aggressive, especially when you
are driving the trucks, as opposed to the buggies. Actually, I prefer racing
the slower buggies, which allows for more dicing it out with the other
racers for position going into the corners, and there seems to be alot less
in the way of race ending spinouts from A.I. drivers bumping you from
behind, and sending you suddenly from 1st place to last place. The games
graphics are hardly state of the art, but they are adequate, and best of
all, they have one of the highest average framerates of any racing game I
have played of late. It is one of the only racers that I have been able to
run at hi resolutions with all of the details on, and 4X antialiasing turned
on my VooDoo 5, on my 600MHZ P3, and still have excellent steady FPS. No
doubt it is in large part due to the low polygon count vehicles and scenery
in the game (those tires are not very round). However, I think the trade off
is worth it. Another gripe is that the A.I. cars do not seem to crash quite
as much as I would think they should, more mistakes on their part would have
been a nice touch. My only other major gripe is that the sounds of the
vehicles are not quite up to par. The trucks sounds are just adequate, but
the dune buggies sounds are totally inaccurate. I would expect that they
should have used 2 stroke engine sounds for the buggies, or at least
something that sounds less like a four stroke V6 or V8. Anyways, Leadfoot
would be a a very decent game at $39.99, and is a superb game for just
$19.99. Definitely worth the money. Also, there are all of Ratbags demo
games on the CD, including Powerslide, Sprintcars, Dirt Track racing, and
pinball racing or whatever it is called. All eXcellent demos.