The story behind Bandits is straight out of Mel Gibson’s "Mad Max" and "The Road Warrior" films. You’re a part of the Wolfpack, a group of scavengers who roam around the desert in a post-apocalyptic Earth. The Wolfpack is constantly fighting with the ever-so-evil Flaming Pumpkins gang (I’m not kidding, that’s what they are called) over rights to gas and land. You command a small, yet heavily armed, dune buggy at the start of the game, fighting your way through wave after wave of Flaming Pumpkins as you attempt to find a mythical gas-rich city. Does the story sound familiar yet? This story is such a copy of Mad Max, I’m surprised Mel Gibson’s lawyers haven’t already filed court papers!

At the start of each round, you’ll have the option of modifying the weapon mounts on your vehicle. You’ll need to choose wisely, because some weapons are just about worthless, while others are practically doomsday devices in their own right. Once you’ve picked your weapons, it’s time to jump into the fray, or is it? You see, the loading screens for each round are nothing but a black background and some text explaining tricks you can try to help you survive the game.

The levels themselves aren’t anything even vaguely unique. They involve either escaping from the Flaming Pumpkins or attacking enemy convoys and strongholds. Bandits is all about driving and shooting, nothing more, nothing less, and if that’s the type of gameplay you’re looking for, then this is the game for you.

Speaking of driving and fighting, the driving controls are a direct copy of Halo’s "you go where you look" system of navigation. Wherever you aim the cursor, the vehicle will follow when you hit the gas. This may take some getting used to for those of you who’ve never played Halo, but most players will figure it out pretty quickly.

Combat is handled rather simply in Bandits. Just aim the cursor on your target, and pull the trigger to start shredding him. The left mouse button fires your primary weapon; the right handles your secondary. You can also fire weapons by choosing the appropriate numerical key assigned to them. The main problem with this system is that the default mouse speed setting is far too low when you start the game, ensuring you’ll probably miss everything in sight. As soon as you start the game, it’s a good idea to go straight into the options and really crank up the mouse speed.

While the gameplay in Bandits is pretty simple, the game itself actually isn’t. The action varies from fast to incredibly fast, making it hard to properly sight your opponents. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that on Medium and Hard difficulty settings, you’re given less armor while your opponents’ vehicles have more. I recommend you play Bandits on the Easy setting for a few rounds to get used to it. Along with the super fast combat, you have to deal with the physics of a dune buggy racing through hilly terrain. Again, if you’ve played Halo, you know what this is like with the vehicle bouncing around and frequently rolling over on steep inclines. The bouncy physics can actually be a lot of fun to play around with, so long as you’re not being pounded by Flaming Pumpkin jeep-jockeys at the time.

There’s nothing terribly impressive about the graphics in Bandits: Phoenix Rising. The vehicles themselves exude a nice "cobbled together from scrap" look, but the environments are drab and void of any texture whatsoever. You can actually drive through the few cacti and tumbleweed that populate the landscape and suffer no ill effect. It would have been nice to at least knock these plants over when you hit them!

As you race along, you’ll kick up plenty of dust in polygonal clouds. The dust, however, has no effect on the gameplay; even a big cloud will dissipate so quickly that you’ll wonder why they bothered putting it in the game. Dust and smoke are generally your friends in a firefight (good hiding places), but in Bandits, they last for such a brief time, you’ll end up ignoring them. And while you kick up dust while racing around like a madman, you’ll never leave a single tire mark in the sand, even if you spin a hundred donuts in one place.

The vehicles, as I’ve mentioned, look pretty good, even when zoomed in. The detail is good enough so that you can notice small dings and scratches. The vehicle designs work well to give off a feeling that they were built by someone who recently raided a junkyard. Mix and match headlamps, bent roll cages and half-painted hoods/bonnets go a long way towards giving you the feeling you’re driving something scrapped together by wasteland warriors. The only weakness in the vehicle models is that they don’t show any damage effects as they get pounded. They either look "fresh to fight" or they’ve just exploded from too much damage, there’s no damage progression at all.

Oh, ouch, make the commentary stop please. Your co-pilot/gunner is an angry Scottish dwarf with an accent lifted completely from Mike Meyers’ comedy skits. While it might seem funny to hear "Fat Bastard" shouting out combat commentary, the dialog is so limited you’ll end up turning off the sound after a bit (I know I did). There’s really only so many times you can hear the co-driver use the word "crap" in a sentence, and believe me, he will use it in every sentence. Thankfully, you can skip most commentary by hitting the ESC key. In-game music is ok, as are the sound effects, though neither is outstanding in any way.

Thanks to some multiplayer online options (deathmatch and team deathmatch) you should get your money’s worth in replay from Bandits. This game is actually better played single player, however, and by switching to a harder difficulty setting, you’ll freshen up the campaign a bit. There’s not a ton of replay here, but enough to ensure you get your money’s worth.

Bandits: Phoenix Rising is a middle-of-the-road title, that is, it’s not great, but it’s not a total stinker either. If you’re looking for a fast-paced shoot ‘em up done with cars, you can’t go wrong here. Anyone looking for deep gameplay, however, would be better off looking elsewhere. Although its story is a blatant rip-off of Mad Max, and the gameplay is essentially based on driving the Warthog from Halo around a desert wasteland, it is still a pretty enjoyable diversion for several hours.