Test Drive: Eve of Destruction

aka: Driven to Destruction
Moby ID: 14579
PlayStation 2 Specs
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Description official descriptions

Modeled on real thrill-show events across America, TD:EOD is a wild racing game with an authentic grassroots flavor. From destruction derbies to suicide races, you can race authentic rust-buckets in a variety of rural tracks. Smashing other racers is rewarded, and the computer opponents will try to smash you as well! Try to complete a full career, starting out with your mom's junk car, racing local goof-balls in crazy races. A wiseacre announcer provides local flavor, as you and your pals take a school bus over a tremendous jump, and the crowd goes wild!

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Credits (PlayStation 2 version)

85 People · View all

President & Project Lead
Senior Producer & Game Designer
Car Artist
Track Artist
Programmer
Senior Programmer
Producer & Announcer
Production
UI Artist
Producer
Marketing Brand Manager
Executive Producer
Director of Technology
Director of Marketing
Director of Creative Services
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 71% (based on 16 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 15 ratings with 2 reviews)

Amazing banger racing game

The Good
absolutely amazing and so fun to play

The Bad
needs to be remade so that we can play it online but keep all the good original content

The Bottom Line
would love to play it again soon!!!

PlayStation 2 · by Mouseatron · 2023

NASCAR meets Hazard County....YEEEHHHAAWW!

The Good
The concept of the game is nothing new, but it is pulled off great with this one. Taking old beat up clunkers and throwing them onto a track with a bunch of other clunkers and beat the crap out of each other...who doesn't love that. The graphics aren't fancy, but the cars do break real nice though, the sound is top-notch and the cars are somewhat fairly easy to control.

The multitude of races will blow your mind along with the ideas of some of them...school bus races, gauntlets (where you must avoid several other cars while completing five laps in a hearse), regular old race, suicide races (where one half of the field faces one way while the other half faces towards the others) along with the crowd favorite Demolition Derby. Throw in a game called Detention, where you get go drive around a figure-eight track in a school bus and beat the crap out of several cars before they finish five laps is always fun, not to mention the two-player battle, in which you fire chickens strapped to dynamite at each (hmmmm, sounds something like my cousins would try).

The replayability is very high, you'll keep coming back for more, but it is much more fun going at it with a friend, you will spend hours playing against each other, losing track of all time and the next thing you know, it's six hours later (trust me on that). Plus the more your complete in the game, you can unlock bonus video clips of the actual racing series the style was based off of. If you were one of the millions.....ok, thousands......ok, ok, hund......all right, all right, one of the dozens of people that watched Carpocalypse that was on Spike TV a little bit back, you'll notice some familiar faces with Ben the school bus driver, Rainbo (yes, his name is Rainbo) and of course Jeff or better know as...Fordzilla the Crowd Thrilla!!!, who sums the game up with the phrase "It's like a roundy round...crash up derby."

The Bad
I do have to say there were some things that really ticked me off while playing this game, one of which is the difficulty. No, it's not too hard, but sometimes can be too easy, even on the hardest setting, once your really get into a groove, you can easily tear through the competition, making it a bit boring at times, which makes playing with a buddy a must to keep you from getting tired of it too fast.

Even though it can be too easy at times, it can also use some cheap tactics on you as well, such as being nudged at the last few feet from the finish line or being hit by someone who is basically is a non-factor or even the dreaded figure-eight jump race mid-air collision, very very....very inconvenient at times. Another annoying this is hitting a ramp the wrong way, causing you to turn in the air, landing very hard on the ground causing you to flip wildly out of control or even slip coming out of a corner on the last lap, even though you never had trouble there before.

There are some glitches, the occasional quick second of the ground disappearing, nothing too bad, but there are times where it does seem like someone hit you, but no one was even close to you or it seems like you won a race, but come in second or third, just minor crap that will make you want to hit the game for a second, but never do.

Another problem I have with this game is the create-a-car feature. In career mode you can buy your own cars and spray paint them and upgrade them as well, but it is very limited of what you can do. Sometimes when you paint your car, the color doesn't show up well letting you still see the rust, which makes it pointless at times.

When painting you can only go to certain spots on the car, ex: say you paint the hood and you want to paint the fenders next, when you paint it, there is a bar at the top of the fenders and at the bottom of the hood, unable to reach it, for some odd reason you can't paint these spots like between the fenders and the trunk. Plus trying to paint letters and numbers on the car with a d-pad is like trying to drive a dump truck with a joystick.

You can earn money in races but smashing and destroying other cars, the more you destroy, the more you earn, this is the primary source of income, which does seem cool, but if you have a bad race and mess up your car really bad and don't have enough money to repair it, your S.O.L. It would have been nice to get sponsors for your car in order to earn more than just hope that you have a strong enough car to last long enough.

The rock music is very suitable for this game, but get's annoying as hell after the fifth minute, luckily that's why there is option to turn it off. You can drive around town, letting you race rivals or pick your next race, but it seems pointless when you can just go to the menu and select it from there, saving you time from driving around, which there isn't much to do of anyway. When you do finish the game at the top of the mountain...that's it, you can replay, but only back before the very last race, so you can't keep going on and on after becoming number one, so you have to restart the game to get the races yet again.

The Bottom Line
Flaws and gripes aside, this is one hell of a game. Games like this don't come along all the time, putting this on par with Destruction Derby of the Playstation days. Crashing and smashing is very fun and this game will make you want to go out and try this in real life.

If you're a stickler for having brand name cars and not generic look-a-likes and need to drive 100 mph on a country road against a Porsche or a Lamborghini, then this game isn't for you, but if you love smashing and crashing driving games or just a hillbilly jackass (like me), then go out and get this game, get your buddy and play for hours on end. Be careful though, this game can be very addicting, just ask my buddy, we've been playing it for years (three years and four months to be precise). Regardless, this is an awesome game and besides as Jeff would put it..."Who doesn't like destruction?"

PlayStation 2 · by Big John WV (26954) · 2008

Trivia

The bonus video clips are from an actually series from Orlando Speedway in Florida which spawned a tv show on Spike TV called Carpacolypse

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Dave Broske.

Additional contributors: Big John WV.

Game added August 30, 2004. Last modified February 16, 2024.