My first impressions were very good. The game has a nice intro and I simply could not wait to get into it, so I hurriedly setup a controller (I selected the Thrustmaster Ferrari Force Feedback) and did a Quick Race. One lap and I was hooked!

Could this be my new favorite game? Could it possibly take the place of my current #1 driving game? The game I have locked away in a safe so that my wife won’t break it into a million pieces! Okay, so I play the game a lot. It’s a stress relief thing! If so, it would take some doing since I am a devout slide-o-holic! Okay, so what's this game I'm talking about? Powerslide, of course! Ratbag’s first release has been atop my list ever since I installed it on my hard drive. From my first test drive\slide I’ve been obsessively hooked on this game! Just ask my wife. On second thought, DON'T! Okay, if ya do happen to let it slip, she’ll tell ya that it has consumed many, MANY evenings. Sometimes from the very time I arrive home from work til the wee hours of the morning. -ahh the memories! Driving Leadfoot would have to feel something close to the sliding physics of that of Powerslide. Otherwise I’d be left with the same emptiness this powerslider feels after just a few laps around them DTR tracks. As good as DTR and DTR Sprint Cars are, I soon found myself going into 'slide' withdrawals needing to get my fix!

For me, the big question at hand is this...Will I still need to attend my weekly PSA (PowerSliders Anonymous) meetings? Or will Leadfoot prove itself to become my new addiction!

Game installation went as well as one could. You get the typical options of installing at minimum or maximum and an additional Multiplayer Spawn install. The one thing I raised an eyebrow to was the prompting for the installation of DirectX 8.0a. The last time I installed Dir.X 8 was the last time I had to reformat my machine! Hopefully 8.0a would be better suited for my system. As it turned out, it installed with no problems and everything is still working as it was.

Navigating the options menu was easy and quick. My weapon of choice was the Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback Wheel, which set up nicely with no hassles. The rest of the Main Menu consists of Single Player\Multiplayer modes, a High Scores section and a Game Replay option that allows us to watch or edit saved replays. The guys at Ratbag also give us the option for creating a movie of a replay and saving it as an AVI. Now you can turn your best lap, or maybe just create a tutorial on how to NOT put your opponent into the wall! You then can save it as an AVI and later brag about it after you send it to your friends! Doesn't that sound kewl!! Sumpin the Kap'n will definitely take advantage of! --Let's see, that's LAZ@joystickreview.com -okay, on to the next category.

The stadiums are majestic, especially at night. The lighting is very well done enhancing the total look of the stadium as you race. I couldn't help but stop and take some snaps -F12 key- and send 'em to my friends so they too could look at what I'm lookin at! On some of the tracks they've added the element of water. After watching LAZ run through the middle of it, the first thing I noticed was the rooster tail he made! Although, while being right behind him, I was surprised to not have had any effects of the water on my windshield. A blurring of my vision for a split second would have been a nice touch of realism.

The dirt and dust that is kicked up from the vehicles while racing is intense to say the least. Sometimes I had to squint as if I was actually going through the cloud of dust myself! While racing with the trucks, I surveyed the amount of detail each one had. Overall they look pretty darn good. The tires are still octagon shaped but as they spin, they look as though they're round. After receiving from RooBah the read-me about how to create our own skins, I fed the templates to LAZ, brought him up to speed, and away he went, quickly creating in just a short time a couple of awesome looking Joystick Review skins for our trucks. I mean it, just looking at these trucks make me want to put off this review and GO RACE!!! Looking at ‘em while in replay mode adds the extra little bit of satisfaction too. The tire tread ...brought to us again by RooBah himself...really make the truck stand out from all the others -thanks Roo-. If you have this game, you have to, no, you must create your own skin! Trust me, you will not be disappointed with the end result. :o}

When you turn the graphics settings up (beyond what your card can handle) you may experience some choppyness in crowded areas of the track, but you are rewarded with expected clearer and better looking graphics.

Ratbag included a much more robust interface to all you to take advantage of a plethora of resolutions that are sure to help push the best video cards to their limits. These high resolutions look great, and if you have a card that can handle running in them - you are fortunate… even if you don't, the graphics still look exceptional.

With my setup, I took the screen resolution option through it's paces. Leadfoot's main system requirements are a PII 266, 32MB of RAM, and a 3D accelerator. After running at minimum and maximum I was a bit upset that the highest screen res. -1600 x 1200, with all 15 competitors, left me with considerable loss of frame rate. Now I realize that my system is not that great but looking at the minimums would make one think that the highest settings should be achiveable.

I ended up with my usual 1024 x 768 screen res. with everything turned up one click shy of the max. That setting is more than enough to please any critic. I also run with all 15 competitors in both single races as well as the career mode. All 15 at the same time equals one heckuva wild race!

My only knock here is that I would've liked to been able to hear the engine sounds of the other vehicles more clearly. Maybe a slide bar to adjust how much one would like to hear. Hearing the sound of your buddy breathing down your bumper would only intensify the situation! LAZ mentioned that he couldn’t get his surround sound to work with this game - and I don’t have the speaker setup to try, so I’m not a bunch of help here. Hey! Maybe we can review PC speakers too!

I did notice a music playback slide bar but once I got out on the tracks, there was no game music. Hmmmm. So back to the instruction booklet I went. The manual explains that there is no music but after the game CD is verified, you can remove it and load up your fav music CD and rock out while you're making your way around each track!

Career Mode
As with Sprint Car Racing, Leadfoot has a career mode that puts you on the easiest tracks with the slowest cars. You build your car up as you race and the better you do the more money you make, and the better the sponsorship money is. They obviously spent a lot of time on this mechanism, and once you get out of the Single Player mode and spend some time in the Career Mode - you will see the big payoff. I found Ratbag to be very true to the sport with the idea that you have to start out at the bottom and get your butt kicked by the people that have already got the sponsors or the money up front. I found it better to stay at the first circuit for a while and get some experience (and money), before making the leap to the advanced levels. I can't say enough about how well Ratbag did with this implementation of a racing career - it is a great way to get you acclimated to the cars, tracks, and tuning aspect of the game. It is very time consuming, but a lot of fun along the way.

If you’re a beginner then the career options menu gives you plenty-o-options to choose from allowing you to gradually adjust to Leadfoot's style of racing. Just choose the career mode, set the number of your opponents, their AI difficulty, the handling realism and the class of vehicle in which you wish to race. As a newbie to this sport, you'll want to select all the minimums in each category and start from there. Although you can't re-adjust the difficulty level of your opponents while in your current career mode, you can however gradually adjust the handling realism as you perfect your new craft.

If you're the advanced player who has done this before, then you're GTG! good to go! Follow the same instructions as above, just crank 'er up a bit to give you some comp. Remember though, take your time moving up to the next class of racers. Over 180 events equals quite a bit of laps, so take your time and hone your skills for the next section in this review!

Koggs is running DSL and gave me his IP. I connected at my usual 32k and went looking for him. He was having a configuration issue, so every time I would try to get connected to his IP it would say he wasn't there (cuz it was configured yet). I got impatient and kept shutting the program down and restarting my connection to see if it was me and eventually got the Blue Screen of Death. I rebooted and Koggs called me to let me know he was ready. We connected immediately following - without incident, and proceeded to race all night. Now you have to realize that I routinely have connection problems and am inevitably the cause of lag and other bothersome multiplayer issues - but we were connected for several hours straight and I didn't experience any lag at all - not one little glitch!

LAZ and Koggs First Showdown
For our fans - details of the LAZ/Koggs showdown… well do you think I would be writing about it I didn't fair well? Hehe. Me and the Kap'n are very competitive and we consistently had lap times that were tenths and hundredths apart, so the racing was good. But I don't have the experience of the Kap'n, and I knew I was up against someone who has been #1 in Powerslide more than once - so, I figured I must try to win at all cost. Let's just say that if Ratbag had a 'flip your opponent the bird' option the Kap'n would have been wearing that button out all night. I routinely put him in the wall (where appropriate) and than ran like a scared little puppy - the strategy worked pretty good, because I was able to get some good ground between us while he was trying to get off the wall! That being said, the highlight was a race where I put myself in the wall and was having a hard time getting out, and Koggs built a good lead… but not good enough - I ran him down like a dog and won the race… no bird necessary that race - too bad Ratbag didn't include a 'cry baby' option for you Koggs!

I particularly like multiplayer racin cuz that way I can race with guys that I know, rather than racing with Joe Whosdat and his brother Boo! Besides, bragging rights are what it's all about anyway right?

The problem is this, or at least some of the time. Three letters L-A-G ! These three lil' letters can create some B-I-G time problems. Especially in a tight race. Now I've seen the Web site, read the review, and viewed the pictures that absolutely trashed Ratbag and Leadfoot for it's inability to race without the annoying presence of lag. All I have to say is this, we all know that we exist in a cyberspace full of latency...DEAL WITH IT! As with every game I have ever played online, if you get someone in there that has a poor connection, you're going to suffer by losing packets of information thus causing the dreaded lag factor. I can't tell you how many times I have been lag slapped right out of a race! It's annoying I know!! That's why I now have a broadband connection. ;-P Sometimes it seems as though I'm on a LAN with the fella's I'm racing and other times I'd like to call my ISP and ask them if they know what they're doing! It's a mixed bag at best.

As for racing online with Leadfoot, as I said before, it's a mixed bag with mixed results. I wish I could say that it's always a LAN-like connection whenever I race online, who wouldn't! But the fact is that there will always be a certain degree of lag that we must deal with. Upon my last visit to GameSpy, I was able to join in a room that had about 5-6 people in it and the racing was pretty good. You had the fast ones up front, a couple of us bangin fenders in the middle of the pack, and a few back markers trading paint at the rear. At the start of a race, you can get hit with a ton of lag which is pretty annoying. Other times I noticed a bit of lag as I approached the lead, getting banged around, spun sideways, but it's always fun! If you can't have fun while your out there then what's the point?

As for my last encounter with LAZ and RooBah, I noticed zero lag. The three of us had a blast as we went through all the tracks -and then some! Those two guys are some fierce competitors that deserve a lot of credit. --Even if LAZ did put me in the wall SEVERAL TIMES! -At one point I drove my buggy to the rail and waited for LAZ to come by so I could shake my fist at 'em!- I did notice that in the heat of a battle as we were headed around the same corner, it seems like you almost have a force field around your vehicle. You think you have more room than you actually do. At times I would see LAZ or RooBah at the right of me as I slid around a left hand turn. Then all of a sudden, I'd see 'em shoving off into the rail! I remember saying something like 'Glad it wasn't me!' -Muah ah ah ah ahhhh!

Bottom line here is this. I am having a great time while multiplayer-ing with others in this game. I have seen and heard arguments on both sides stating the good and the lag! If Ratbag comes out with a fix for improved online play, then great. If not, then I'm ok with what I have. I'm not just saying that either. The DSL is a huge plus but if I get into a room that has a high ping, then I'm outta there looking for a lower ping. Deal With It!

Online Technical Support
At the time of this review, there was no posted technical support section on the Ratbag web site. They do have a FAQ section, that at the time of review was pretty slim and will hopefully be added to.

No Integrated Help
If you are looking for integrated help files in the game - you won't find it here. There is a price to pay when you get this high quality of game play at a phenomenal price… and this is one of the things. Integrated help is not a major priority in the Ratbag games that I have seen, and this is one place for needed improvement. However, I cannot condemn them too much - because there is generally an added price for the quality of help that would be ideal. If in the future Ratbag improves in this area, without raising the price - they will deserve even more extended kudos.

An excellent value, at an excellent price.

And remember, we don't get paid to write this stuff, the game is simply that fun!