Bandits: Phoenix Rising is vehicle combat game set in a post apocalyptic world resembling the world of "Mad Max" movies. The game has been developed by Swedish developer GRIN, the same team who made Ballistic, the last year's high speed futuristic arcade-style racer. In the game, you can assume the role of Fennec and Rewdalf, the notorious leaders of the Wolfpack gang, who just want to get as much loot as possible and fully enjoy life. Fennec is the hard neck driver and thinker in the team and Rewdalf is the gunner. Rewdalf character is best described as a trigger happy Scottish midget with a foul mouth :) The story starts out with our two main characters, Fennec and Rewdalf, sneaking in to enemy territory to steal a distiller, which make cactus brew, from their sworn enemies the Flaming Pumpkins and then return back with it to their notorious gang, the Wolfpack. Later on the as our two bandits do what they do best, raiding convoys, blasting cars and stealing things, they stumbles over a cargo load containing something that to them seems rather useless but other gangs in the wasteland seems very eager to get their hands on. And so the story unfolds, taking our "heroes" through the world of Bandits making new enemies as well as allies....

Bandits features over 24 missions ranging from protection/raiding of convoys, blowing of bridges, attacking fortresses, stealing a distiller, protecting trains from being robbed and massive car duels with over 50 vehicles involved. For example, there are objectives taken from the fourth mission: "Wolfpack scouts have spotted a convoy that is rumoured to hold gold. Their escort is a serious bunch. Fennec and Redwalf are going after it big time! 1) Find some way to force the convoy to take another route 2) Destroy all enemy units in the area 3) Shoot the cargo truck to make it stop, but don't blow it up".

Each level is scripted to a high degree, so over the case of multiple retries it's possible to memorize the areas where enemies lurk and events are triggered. However the enemy AI is quite good and it will give you a lot of trouble. After completing certain missions you will receive a special weapon to upgrade your vehicle. Every gang in Bandits have their own set of cars, the cars are very different when in comes to size, mass, driving features and guns. Some cars are small and fast with just a machinegun to shot with whereas other are big, slow and heavily equipped with lot of guns as mini-guns and rocket- and grenade launchers. Some way of solving missions are possible only with a special type of car and some combat styles require other types. It is really up to you to decide what car is the best from your knowledge of the maps and controls.

Bandits have support for LAN up to 8 players (you can hook up to 20 players, if you have really fast computers), Internet play through ordinary IP typing and GameSpy Arcade. The multiplayer portion of the game is extremely enjoyable, definitely more enjoyable than single player. You can play deathmatch and team deathmatch, sadly the game contains only nine multiplayer maps which are all very nearly the same map with slightly different environments (icy tundra, lush green pastures, etc...) Hey GRIN, a little more variety here would have been nice! :) If you like driving, fast paced combat, fun and kick ass music, try this playable demo (130MB) and you will see :)

Minimum system requirements:
If you have a T&L based card such as any Geforce or Radeon card then the min specs are a PII 500, 128MB of RAM and a soundcard.

If you have an older card such as a TNT2, G400 or KYRO based card then the min specs would be: a CPU of PIII 900 or better, 128 MB of RAM and a soundcard. The need for CPU increases as you don't have T&L capability (i.e. your CPU will handle most of the geometric 3D operations).