Crash Time III
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| Cobra 11: Highway Nights (Crash Time III) | |
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| Developer(s) | Synetic |
| Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360 |
| Release | November 27, 2009 |
| Genre(s) | Racing |
Alarm für Cobra 11: Highway Nights (also known as Crash Time III) is a racing video game developed by Synetic Games and published by RTL. It is the third game adapted from the Alarm für Cobra 11 – Die Autobahnpolizei television series. The game was launched on November 27, 2009 for Xbox 360 and PC.
Gameplay
The story is about Semir Gerkhan and Ben Jager (the duo from the previous game, Burning Wheels) who are assigned to infiltrate terrorist activity in the city and the Autobahn. The vehicles are fictitious, but resemble some famous cars. All of the cars have a generic C11 emblem (and/or the word Cobra) and a numberplate which starts with the initials SY, representing Synetic Games as the creator. Usually, the cars comes in 3 types, and the third type of the car is usually the tuned-up version of the car itself. The game consists of more than 70 missions, an area of 32 square kilometers (the city itself is loosely based on the city of Berlin) with more than 200 kilometers of city streets and Autobahn, 47 vehicles to choose from, Story Mode with dense story atmosphere, a dynamic in-car pathfinder function, and a typical ambiance of the series, with explosive crashes and high speed chases.
Objectives
Players of this game not only have to absolve tasks, but they have to do it as good as possible. The missions are rated up to five stars. The players lose a star if their tries, shots, tasks, or time doesn't stay within certain limits. Not only do the stars affect your gameplay, but they also affect their overall rating as well; if they complete their missions without receiving any stars (or with a low quantity of stars), their rating will be affected negatively.
Suspects
There are a few things you can do with suspects when you drive up to them on patrol, but in the missions, you have to do a specific task with the suspect. The suspect vehicles use the path-finder system as well, so the path they use isn't the same.
- Pursuit; Chase down the suspect. You arrest him by either shooting his car, totaling it, or using the PIT maneuver (hitting the back-end at the side to put the suspect into a spin.) and stopping in front of him. For some specific missions, you can use the drone to destroy the suspect vehicle.
- Shadowing; Keeping your distance from the suspect. They must not get too close, nor they drive too far. Don't make too much noise, either (ex. blaring your horn or crashing into too many traffic cars or obstacles). DO NOT turn on the police lights and the siren. Also, make sure that you don't bump the suspect, as that can be a dead giveaway. If you wait a while as you're shadowing the suspect, the meter on the top left corner decreases in the level where the suspect notices you.
- Race; If this happens during patrol, you have to drive to a specific place and stop there before the suspect does.
Graphics and effects
While the traffic vehicles are mostly low in quality, they more than make up for that when it comes to the explosions. If you crash into a car at a speed more than 100 km/h (62 mph), the traffic car you hit explodes, and when the cars explode near more vehicles, you get a chain of explosions. The cars you drive (ranging from Semir's signature BMW 330d E90 to the classic Mercedes C350 W204 driven by Ben, along with the slow, yet powerful and resistant Rosenbauer Panther and the precise-handling, high-speed, and very powerful Formula C11 Racer) are very good in quality, and while Synetic's crash physics can sometimes become non-realistic in some situations, the scratches on the cars and shattered glass make up for that, giving the game more realism.In addition,the models of traffic cars and the cars you drive are all sharing a same type of 3D model file format (Synetic style *.mox files for 3D model and *.mtl with a same name for corresponding materials and listing required texture files that are coded in a tga-like format,compressed ptx). All of these makes it possible to exchange the files to enhance the quality of traffic cars using other models from the game itself.