Game:

Quarantine (1994)

Duration: 9:37

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Original Air Date: January 7th, 2010

Quarantine is a good, repetitive (but functional), wild romp through a world filled with crime, drugs, and disease. Take the driving of Crazy Taxi with the grit and mission-based gameplay of Grand Theft Auto and you already have a pretty good idea of what Quarantine is. While not particularly great (a good enough game for its time), it is a bit of a pioneer in terms of gameplay for its mechanics and more open vehicular combat. Made in 1994, it was one of the more successful entries into the first-person combat franchise since the creation of Doom and spawned a sequel of sorts, Road Warrior. It was one of the games deemed controversial at the time for its gratuitous violence.

The story is interesting enough. In the once prosperous (but now post-apocalyptic) fictional city of KEMO, technology and advancement was a constant push. The city eventually produced advanced flying hover cars, meeting the country's demand for more sophisticated transportation until 2022. At this time, crime had risen so much that the city fell into disorder and the economy suffered. Criminals rode armored hover cars, robbing the innocent and killing bystanders. Several years later, a group called OmniCorp promised to combat crime and return KEMO to normal. However, it was just a clever lie. OmniCorp instead decided to build a giant wall around the city and seal everyone inside, isolating them from the outside world.

Outraged, the general public became more unruly than ever and the city fell deeper into darkness, the insanity among the people growing. Ten years passed and OmniCorp created an experimental behavior-adjusting chemical called "Hydergine 344" that was slipped to people through the cities water supply. While it was meant to pacify people, they didn't predict that the stagnant water would alter the drug, giving people brain damage and make many insane. Over half the city became unstable, crazed killers overnight.

This is where the player comes in. Controlling Drake Edgewater, a 21st-century amored cab driver who is one of the few unaffected by the spreading disease, is trying to escape the city alive and break open the only exit in the city. To do so, he makes money picking up and dropping off "sane" individuals to make money and upgrade his cab with stronger weapons. You start with limited weapons, but can get missiles, a buzz-saw, and other upgrades later on. You can also make your cab jump and speed off into the distance.

The game's controls are touchy and somewhat hard to control, but it doesn't put you in too much danger. The presentation is pretty good for the time (1994). The music is a mixed bag IMO. Some of it seems like rock, some of it is punk, some just sounds like "WTF", and it seems like it was done by European or Australian alternative bands. The nice thing is that you can change the tracks to what you want in-game. The gameplay gets old pretty soon, but you can also stop and play later. Enjoy.

The game is also known as Death Throttle and Hard Rock Cab... and is it me, or does the woman in the opening movie look like an adult Miranda Cosgrove?