It's a great game, is Rollcage Stage II. Why, the Future Gamer team haven't spent so much time racing around on the walls and ceilings since some swine switched our Appletize for Toilet Duck...
James Price

This is, without question, one of the most thoughtfully designed games you'll get to play this year. Like its predecessor before it, and owing an obvious debt of gratitude to the Wipeout series, Rollcage Stage II offers futuristic racing. Its subtleties, however, are manifold. It's the type of game that establishes a link between the words 'expectations' and 'revise'. You expect solid, by-the-numbers racing, but you get so much more.

In a nutshell, a typical race can be described as follows: you race along a track. And sometimes the walls. Plus, on occasion, the ceiling. If you've got the option enabled, you can collect and use weapons to hinder your opponents. They reciprocate in kind. And it's very fast.

As a brief, that's not bad. It worked in Rollcage and the same can be said, sans ceiling and, for most, wall-based racing, in Wipeout 2097. The six or seven people that bought a copy of F-Zero X for their N64 in the UK would agree that the speed/future/violence/speed premise has merit, too.

But it's the little things, the artful touches and considered decisions, that make Rollcage Stage II so very enjoyable. Take its tracks, for example. At first you attempt to play it like any other racing game - meaning, specifically, you stick to the course. Later, though, you'll attempt to mount a wall in order to reach a speed-up pad. With practice, it's possible to race on any appropriate surface you may encounter with a degree of assurance... but you can never have total confidence in your ability to not crash horribly. Do you stay with the road or go for those much-needed speed-up pads on the ceiling? Should you take the separate, 'secret' route that some courses offer, or opt for the relative safety of the not-so-straight and narrow? This variable nature makes each track a challenge.