As it’s bank holiday I thought I’d post another freebie today - reminds me of Prince William and Kate driving through London in Prince Charles’ sports car Lol!
Dirchie Kart (66Mb)
Dirchie Kart is a brilliant ‘take’ on Mario Kart. It's a really excellent cartoony kart racing game with Physics modelling and surface friction and good action effects, played on an isometric view track. It is free for the PC, with a pay for Xbox version also available.
You need to download and install the Microsoft XNA framework v4.0 free from Microsoft. Do note that the latest updated version won’t work with XNA v3.1 but there is no problem about downloading and installing XNA v4.0 whether you’ve XNA version 3.1 installed or not.
A big draw to the game is the split-screen multi-player mode though you’ll need at least 3 Xbox controllers to play with four players, but you can play with 2 or 3 players as well as single player mode. There are also ‘battle’ and ‘drag’ multiplayer modes to complement the race mode. Each race consists of three laps.
There is a choice of 8 player avatars and three race vehicles, a souped-up car, an (old!) grand prix car or a truck. There are various weapon power-ups to pick up, plus speed boosts, and you can shoot backwards or forwards. As well as shooting at opponents they can of course shoot at you, even blasting you off the track! Some tracks have minefields or drops alongside the track.
There’s a single race option or two championship modes and 10 very varied tracks of three difficulties to choose from in single race mode. You can also choose between three engine sizes for whichever vehicle you select. The game’s AI is set at just the right level, meaning AI opponents will not all vanish out of sight, but it is a challenge to win races. Some tracks will need power-slides around corners, others quick reflexes to avoid falling or sliding off the track, especially if you get a sudden unexpected power-boost! You can also select a 'shop' mode where you purchase add-ons from coins won in the previous race, but at the possible expense of losing places trying to get coins!
Vehicles lean while cornering. The switchable bike mode is fun though you have less traction for cornering when in bike mode! You also get speed boosts by choosing a good cornering line. Winning does depend a lot on choosing good racing line round the tracks. And of course in despatching opponents from the race at suitable times/places. There’s a very useful spring bonus that will jump you ahead of an opponent. There are hazards on the track but unlike Mario Kart, weapons bonuses are only one or two set places around the track. They are disguised with a ‘?’ symbol so you can’t choose which to get or when, though you can just dodge around them if you don’t want weapons or extra weapons at a particular time.
Vehicle handling is excellent which is a very necessary feature for a racing game to play well. Collisions and explosions are fairly commonplace and it’s great fun to dodge rapidly between opponents over-taking them on the way!
The game plays windowed with no option to change this, but the window is sized to fit the screen width at least for a normal monitor. It probably looks best played on a widescreen monitor. I did need to move the window manually slightly to play but this probably depends on native screen resolution in use. Trying to use any substantially lower screen resolution just placed the window unreachable and unmoveable. If this happens reset your screen to a higher (preferably maximum) resolution.
Use the ‘Enter’ key, ’Arrow’ keys and ‘Esc’ key to navigate the menu or Xbox controller buttons etc.
The game can be played using the keyboard but is best suited to using an Xbox controller plugged into your PC USB port. The keyboard controls are ‘Arrow’ keys Accelerate, brake, turn left/right, ‘Q’ key Power slide, ‘E’ key Eject to pocket bike, ‘ W/S’ keys Shoot forward/backward, ‘ A/D’ keys Cycle weapons.
It needs 254 Mb hard disk space for the extracted files and runs direct from the extracted folder.
The only very slight distraction is that spectators are just flat shapes fitting with the cartoony nature of the graphics. The graphics are great. The intro music is a bit unusual for a racing game, but the in-game music and sound effects are excellent. Many of the cartoony graphics in the game are really quite surreal. There’s one very particularly surreal effect - if you fall off track-side drops; like Pinocchio’s nose, your hat increases in height each time you fall into a drop! So you could be driving round with a balloon-shaped hat many times taller and wider than your vehicle!
I think it’s an excellent idea to have the PC version free to act as an advert for the Xbox version. I like this approach as it can generate the author some income to cover development costs etc, while providing the full version (and a game of commercial quality) free for the PC!
As an Indie game, it hearkens back well to the days of 16-bit racing!
It’s an excellent action racing game, freeware on the PC and it’s very cheap for the Xbox version as Xbox games go! Being able to get this entirely free for the PC makes it a very most worthwhile download! Very much even the more-so if you like death-match racing!
It’s very enjoyable and great fun which makes for a really great recommendation!
Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgGW8Y86748
Download HERE < - - - NEW Updated version!
Free Download Microsoft XNA v4.0 (Needed) HERE
