Carmageddon

The Good
Carmageddon is a fun game. Think about the movie DeathRace 2000 or the old Steve Jackson game Autoduel, Put it in a 3-Dimensional environment and you get the idea of this game.

The Graphics, in low-res are good, but not superb. Running the came on my P233 with low-res is fast. And I mean FAST. The sensation of speed in remarkable. Running the game in High-Res is very nice looking, but on my 233 is a but lagged on the frame rate.

The Gameplay is great. 17 different tracks (each unlocked as you increase in your ranking), Over 30 power-ups (such as turbo, mega-turbo, instant handbrake, and "Pinball Mode"), plenty of cars to unlock make this a game your need to work at to unlock all the secrets. You can upgrade your cars with better Armor, Engine and Tires, so as you progress through the game, your car get better and faster. The "feel" of each of the cars are different. For instance the Cop car handles a lot differently than the Electric Blue car. Another great feature of the game is "Instant Repair". Basically, it allows you to make repairs while driving at full throttle. No hassles of pitstops or repair screens in between races.

The Physics model is good. Just when you think you can make a jump and land it right, the physics engine shines! You see the car tipping just like in real life. It's pretty cool.

The Sound is good for game. It's great when you hit a jump at the right speed and the guy lets out a cool sounding yell. Unfortunately, my sound card isn't able to play the MIDI files during the game, although I can play them outside the game. But considering I can't listen to the music while playing the game, I can't give an objective opinion on it.

The AI, depending on the level of difficulty you select, is either really easy or downright impossible. On the easy settings, scoring points and credits is easy, wrecking other cars is really simple and the game is ok. On the Most difficult setting, You're lucky if you get within 100 feet of the starting line before getting the snot kicked out of you. Progressing is much harder, and wrecking cars is a long procedure.

The Bad
The Control of the cars is real touchy. I've played with a joystick, but I prefer the keyboard for control purposes. The joystick controls are very loose - it's very difficult to make turns. The keyboard is also a bit difficult to manage, but much easier to control.

The Bottom Line
It's a great game. Mindless fun - and I think each one of us who has driven down the road and played the "points" game (you know... 5 points for cones, 15 points for runners, etc.) will appreciate the game.

The Good
Carmegeddon is a game I heard a lot about before playing it. It was after watching an episode from Lazy Game Reviews (check out his YouTube channel, it is very cool) that I eventually decided to buy the game along with its expansion pack and sequel from Good Old Games and after spending some hours with it, I discovered that this game is much more than just plain controversy.

And oh boy, was this game controversial. It already starts the moment you boot the game up. After an awesome intro movie, you get to the main menu and your cursor is nothing less than a severed hand with blood dripping from it! Yeah, that already tells you that this game is not for people with weak stomachs. And it just gets better from there on!

In Carmageddon, you compete in races all around the USA. You can win the contest in one of three ways. Passing all the checkpoints just like in a usual racing game, eliminating all the other racers by ramming into them or killing all pedestrians! Obviously, it is very tempting to just give the racing rules the middle finger and go out on a macabre, all-consuming rampage.

This game is extremely violent and has a ton of black humor. When you drive over pedestrians, they will scream out in pain and you will hear their flesh getting torn off their bodies. Slam into them with enough speed and they will swing towards your screen with chunks of man meat flying everywhere. Your wheels smear their guts over the concrete and you can keep on driving over their ripped open carcasses while looking around for your next victim. And if that wasn't enough, your driver dryly comments to the events that "shit happens" or sarcastically says "sorry" after driving over someone at speeds over 100 km an hour.

In addition, Carmageddon is about as addicting as it is bloody. As you complete races, kill pedestrians and ram your competitors out of commission, you gain credits which you can use to rank up. Unlocking new tracks and better equipment. You start at level 99 and you will have a lot of driving and slaughtering to do in order to reach the coveted level 1 rank.

When it comes to locations, you have city streets, countryside, industrial zones, mines, snow covered mountains and more! The game's timer is very generous and it is quite easy to get your timer well over ten minutes. It certainly encourages you to explore the entire map because the race track itself is just the tip of the iceberg. There are plenty of more locations to visit and people to kill when you go off the track and just drive around like a freaking maniac! Go to the beach and watch people in swimming trunks running for their lives. Visit the fields and mountains and see cows shit all over the place (literally) just before your turn them into raw steak saignant! Mmmm!

When exploring the maps, you will also find plenty of power ups and game changers. These power ups vary to extra time or credits all up to turning your ride into a bouncing machine or making it shoot electricity to zap everything you come across into a cooking, bleeding mess! Just make sure to avoid the cops, because they will ferociously hunt you down. And in case your car gets beat up or turned upside down, no worry! You can always have your car fully repaired or recovered as long as you pay for it (and you can even get into debt in case you're out of cash).

Music and sound effects are excellent. The music consists of industrial and thrash metal music with tracks made by Fear Factory as well as originally composed tracks. The soundtrack is fast, aggressive and agitating and perfectly sets the game's atmosphere. Finally, the sound effects are gruesomely crisp. Driving over someone who is already dead or about to be dead makes a painfully squishing sound and cars make screeching, ear piercing noises as they crash into walls or into each other.

The game's graphics aren't bad but not much to write home about. Much of the game is in 3D except for the pedestrians which are sprites. It definitely adds to the gory beauty of the game as polygon pedestrians would have looked awful given the time this game was released.

One last thing I want to mention is how great the game controls are. I personally never expected a pc racing game to control so smoothly. You only need to use the num pad and a few more buttons to handbrake, repair and recover your ride. That is all. No controller or steering wheel needed, just a good old keyboard.

The Bad
One thing I miss in this game is a genuine commentator. It would certainly be fun to have a game host making fun remarks about whatever ridiculous stuff you do in the game. For example, a good line after running over someone would be "Let's hope he enjoys his new tattoo" or "don't worry, you'll get a full life insurance refund for that."

Some customization for your car would have been great. Although you can unlock cars, you cannot change anything when it comes to aesthetics. It is therefore impossible to change your car's color or to add cool gadgets like spikes, hooks or other hardcore equipment.

Speaking of unlocking cars, you may think that you use credits to unlock your opponent's cars but no. You have to thrash your opponent's car an unknown random number of times in order for it to unlock. The game offers no requirements to meet in order to unlock a particular car is a matter of patience and dumb luck. And if that wasn't enough, you cannot unlock every car you see in the game. Yeah, talk about some unnecessary car teasing.

And of course, do not play Carmageddon if you dislike violent and politically-incorrect entertainment. Then it would be easier to French kiss a cobra rather than enjoying this game! But if you have even a little dark, sadistic edge, than you will enjoy this game as much as I enjoy killing bunnies with axes. Ok, just kidding, I kill them with chainsaws after driving over them with my monster truck while wearing nothing but a pigs mask on my head! Yeah, talk about bunny genocide!

The Bottom Line
A true classic in the racing genre, Carmageddon's outrageous, violent gameplay will keep you satisfied for a long time. The pc platform may not have that many racers, but with the Carmageddon series, it certainly has a big pawn on the board of racing franchises. This game definitely belongs to the collection of every self-respecting gamer. Go get it and enjoy that feeling of getting warm internal guts into your hair and face. Let's roll!

The Good
Carmageddon walks the line of political correctness--you are given bonus points and money for hitting pedestrians. And, I'm ashamed to say, it's incredibly satisfying and fun. Come on--what other game in the world (other than the sequel) lets you pound into those moronic rollerbladers and slow, fat pedestrians with a satisfying thud?

If you enjoy sick humor (and hey, who doesn't?), you'll have much to laugh about, as the game can get pretty sick sometimes. The amount of pure carnage is just amazing. In addition to merely smacking peds silly, you can get special bonuses for things like artistic expression and piledrivers. And don't forget the electro-bastard death ray!

I could not believe how over the top this game was until I played it. I laughed so hard the first ten minutes of gameplay that I had tears streaming down my face. It's that rediculously outrageous and silly.

Of course, you can win races by actually racing them normally and completing all the checkpoints, but that's no fun at all. It's much more fun to unleash metal-crunching power against your other race opponents--preferably by ramming them head-on. The physics engine in Carmageddon is great in this respect; you can ram another car so hard that they'll get pushed backwards, hit an explosive barrel, go flying sideways, smash into a nearby building, and keep going. This is made much more damaging if you have the pinball powerup, which makes every concrete surface act like rubber (except you still hit it very hard, like concrete).

The powerups are worth mentioning, since they provide a lot of laughs as well: Hotrod, for funnycar-like acceleration; lunar gravity, for high jumps; Jupiter gravity, for no jumps and scraping your frame against the ground all the time; solid granite car for maximum destruction; stuck peds, which makes pedestrians stick to your car after you ram them; frozen peds, which freezes them to the spot; the list goes on and on.

The Bad
There is one valid gripe with Carmageddon: The speed of the game engine. Carmageddon follows a physics model that has to account for bouncing and ricocheting off of walls, other cars, etc. This takes a lot of calculations, but I can't help thinking that they might have been able to optimize it just a little bit more. On the recommended hardware, most options have to be turned down and the game played at 320x200 to keep the framerate over 15fps. A high-res option is included, but at 2-3 fps, it's a joke.

Another gripe is actually directed at european countries--they don't get to see the full game! The European version of the game uses "robots" instead of real people with blood, and the German version uses "zombies" with green blood. That just isn't fun at all.

Finally, the gameplay starts to get repetitive after awhile.

The Bottom Line
If you need to relieve some stress, thought that the movie Dead Alive was hilarious, or generally want to smash into everything and everyone: Carmageddon is your game.