Basically, this game is a car shoot-em up. It's like Twisted Metal, Carmageddon, and even the old Megarace (cept without the racing). All in all, i wouldn't say that its an original genre, but it does expand on the quite small collection of these types of games.

Bandits: Phoenix Rising is based in the future where everything is in chaos. There is only one city left, and its walls are closed to the outside world. The world is a desert wasteland and there many gangs that have fun fighting in their cars, raid other gangs, and just wreak havok upon each other. At the current point in that game that I'm at, I have not seen any references to that last city yet, but i'm sure, since the city is talked about in the intro sequence (which really isn't anything but the background situation that i just mentioned). So all in all Bandits doesn't have much of an engaging storyline. You play the role of Rewdalf and Fennec of the Bandits gang. Your first mission is to infiltrate an enemy gang's base and obtain a "booze-o-matic." Then later on you raid a convoy and find some scrap metal which for some reason is quite wanted and valuable. Of course, to you, the money is better than the scrap metal. From here it leads into some more events. But I'll stop here.

As i said previously, you play as Rewdalf and Fennec of the Bandits gang. What's kinda wierd is that you control both of them at the same time. One is the gunner and the other is the driver of your car. In regards to controlling the car and shooting, think of HALO. It's like driving the warthog and the shooting style is like the tank. You have a primary gun and secondary weapons (which of course you can change, and, depending on the car, have multiple weapons). As your progress through the game, you get access to newer cars and better guns, but you must select your vehicle and weapons wisely in order for a level to be beaten easier. Now for those of you who haven't played HALO (*gasp*) you drive by aiming the crosshair somewhere and that's where you go. There's an option to drive the car and aim the turret separately, but this is kind of confusing. However, if you do get the hang of it, shooting backwards is soooooo much easier.

Being a fairly new game, the graphics are somewhat outdated, but at least it runs smoothly. There's nothing too special about the cars or the explosions, and definetely not the environment. The environment is basically the same in all the levels, just some boring dunes with scarce buildings here and there, but mostly not too interesting. I'm thinking that the developer was aiming more towards better gameplay than super cool looking graphics. Now don't misinterpret this, the graphics on Bandits is still quite good. The look and feel of it (even though it's similar in almost all the levels i've played) is a solid one. I still think they could've improved on the explosions a bit. Head on over to my screenshots section to view some pics.

The sound in this game isn't exactly ground-breaking technology either, but its still good. The explosions sound real, the weapons all are cool. And the speech is pretty funny at times. Whenever you blow someone up, either character will say something. After a while, it gets a little old as they don't have a whole bunch of lines to say. So I guess audio isn't great, but it definetely does not suck.

Even though none of the aspects of this game are ground-breaking or new and radical to the gaming world, Bandits is still a pretty good game and should be noted and considered. I don't see much of a replay value of it right now, but the multiplayer aspect should have some good points. However, one problem about multiplayer: it's extremely hard to find a game online. There are barely up and running servers that have this game. So in saying good multiplayer value, i'm talking about LAN play.