"This is you; you smoke and wear shirts with cobras on them. You are bad ass."
A top-down, 2-D Vehicular Combat game by Science of Tomorrow, released in 2005, about one man and his quest for vengeance.The game begins in 1983, when Jebediah Priest escapes from prison with the help of his gang, the Red Texas Four, to exact revenge on Santos, a lawman, and the brother of the Player Character. Santos is executed in full view of his family, his children are kidnapped, and his Cool Car is stolen as the Four flee into Mexico. You, a man with a yellow Beetle, a sawn-off shotgun, and a strong desire for vengeance, head into Mexico to kill the Four, rescue your brother's kids, and get his car back.
- The Alleged Car: The Beetle and the Tooper.
- Backstab Backfire: The last boss. What a way to go.
- Battle Intro: Before each boss fight, a drawing of Player Character is shown directly across from a drawing of the boss in question, all of which is superimposed on the background for any fullscreen menu or message.
- Boss Battle: There are a total of four, but the first three involve loads of Mooks.
- Boring, but Practical: As far as weapons go, the bullet-based weapons tend to be this.
- Collision Damage: Oddly averted; no car can take damage from collisions.
- Cool Car: There are muscle cars, sports cars, a DeLorean, and an extremely sporty version of the El Camino. Take your pick.
- Coup de Grâce Cutscene: For all but one boss. The third boss is spared.
- Cutscene: All cutscenes are in the form of comics that are slid across the screen, lit/darkened, and otherwise manipulated without involving any traditional animation. Apparently .lua scripting is used to achieve this effect.
- Critical Existence Failure: After taking a certain amount of damage, any car in the game can and will explode. Besides smoking at about 40% health, nothing else happens to a damaged car.
- Death Makes You Loose Your Cargo And 25% Of Your Money
- Elaborate Equals Effective: Nicer-looking cars and weapons are generally more effective.
- Endless Game: Nothing really happens after defeating the last boss.
- Every Car Is a Pinto: No actual Pintos, but every car explodes after taking too much damage.
- Firing One-Handed: How else can you aim and fire a gun from your window while driving?
- Freeware Games
- Geo Effects: Driving off-road slows you down.
- Guns Akimbo: You can carry two weapons, but you can only fire one at a time (which one you fire is dependent on whether you're aiming to the left or to the right of your car; aim to the left, and you fire your left weapon. Aim to the right, and you fire your right weapon).
- Infallible Babble: Which is weird, since you normally deal with legally and morally questionable characters.
- It's Up to You: Your personal revenge isn't something most people fight for.
- More Dakka: In multiple flavors, no less, each more expensive and more damaging than the last.
- New Old West: Strong hints of this, but not technically a "Western", as it takes place in Mexico.
- No Name Given: The Player Character, though in his Battle Intro his nickname changes with each boss. For the first boss, it's Unknown. The other three names are Snake, Cobra, and Mexican Motor Mafia.
- Omnicidal Neutral: The Player Character, though his intentions aside from revenge are never stated. Can be closer to traditional Good or Evil based on player actions.
- Outside-the-Box Tactic: The R/C Car Bombs can be used to great effect for such tactics, though having the JATO Rockets is practically required to beat the last boss.
- Overworld Not to Scale
- Permanently Missable Content:
- Any car you drive to the Warehouse (to rescue Santos' kids). That instance of that car will be replaced by the unique, almost all-powerful Mare Cruiser.
- Any weapons you had before getting the R/C Car Bombs and JATO Rockets, respectively. On top of that, those two unique weapons themselves cannot be re-obtained if you replace them... though anyone with a little determination and a little know-how can modify their saved games (.fsv format) with any decent text editor. In fact, most of the lines in a saved game are plain English followed by numbers denoting type or amount.
- Plot Lock: Parts of your map (which should, by all rights, be a full map of the region) are obtained as the plot progresses (mostly through beating bosses). The second part of the map is obtained when the first boss unwittingly loses a round of Grenade Tennis while pinned under his wrecked car.
- Repeatable Quest: Only some side missions.
- Revolvers Are Just Better: Subverted, as the only revolver is a .38 with a serious lack of power.
- Sidequest: Fetch-and-Deliver quests, Shoot-These-Cars-For-Me quests, and Here's-Something-For-Your-Trouble (one-of-a-kind-weapon retrieval) quests.
- Short-Range Shotgun: Somewhat averted.
- Shotguns Are Just Better: At short-to-medium range, a shotgun can work wonders. Outside of that range, not so much.
- Sidetrack Bonus: Sidequesting is usually the only way to get money. Just don't buy any exceptionally rare cars before going to rescue Santos' kids, because they'll be gone after that.
- Stuff Blowing Up: So many different flavors of explosive death in this game...Including your own, if you're not careful.
- Suspend Save: Whenever exiting the game by the normal method, your status is saved.
- Too Dumb to Live: The first boss, La Toro.
- Video Game Geography: All ingame areas, including the overall map, are limited to rectangles.
