Dukes of Hazzard: Return of the General Lee Review

There is no denying that I am not a master in television shows. The Dukes of Hazzard, I have heard of, but have never seen it. The same could be said for Starsky and Hutch, released by Gotham Games last fall for the PS2 and Xbox. Like Starsky and Hutch, this game takes place in vehicles. Like Starsky and Hutch, this game is based off of a show that is no longer airing (and has not been airing) on television for years, excluding the hundreds of channels now offered by satellite, where you spend more time looking for shows than actually watching them.

Unlike Starsky and Hutch, I did not have the least bit of pleasure out of playing Dukes of Hazzard. Playing it was more of a chore than joy. You will play as the Duke Brothers, driving General Lee, a Confederate flag-draped car, which helps display the show’s roots – i.e. the South. You will encounter familiar faces (if you are a fan of the show, that is), such as Daisy Duke, Uncle Jesse, etc.

The game takes place entirely in vehicles. It is structured to be mission-based. If you have played this type of game, driving around large stretches of road, finding items, tailing people, etc., then be prepared to do it again in Dukes of Hazzard. The most enthralling of all would be the timed missions, where you have to get from A to B in a certain amount of time.

What is the point of driving if there are not stunts though? Dukes of Hazzard has you covered in this respect. The game will provide you with a few opportunities to floor it, and perform some jumps. Nothing spectacular by any stretch, and often, you will fail in balancing enough to land on something, but the slow-mo camera angles are cool.

Back to the bad though. Driving around the game area is simply a boring experience. There is not much to differentiate from one part of the game area from the other, so the map provided (while not very useful, since there are so few streets), will have to be sufficient for your needs, as that is all you have got. The cheap attempt at adding a sense of open-endedness is by requiring you to find a location to start a mission. This fails, because missions are simultaneously played, from one to the next, without a choice of a side-mission or such.

As I spoke of, the map provided is useless in many senses. While you are driving, you can have a transparent map displayed by pressing the back button. This will impair your vision, but trying to view your map, close it, then drive to the specific location is about as hard in terms of difficulty as it would be to view it at the same time as driving.

Some states have a three strikes, your out laws, in regard to crime. I say in this case, one strike is enough to warrant a crime against humanity. Call me a northern elitist, but hillbilly gaming sucks. I would much rather be driving in a NASCAR race, but these types of games have little appeal in the mainstream or among cult followers. Those are the only people that I can recommend this game to in good conscience.