"Road rage? Don't talk to *me* about road rage! Just the other day, I was innocently driving along, mowing down a few cows, when all of a sudden - CRASH! Some jerk in a souped-up dragster from Hell rear-ended me, and I ended up lying upside-down in a ditch! Then he starts reversing, ready to send me to oblivion... Well, there was nothing I could do but get my car the right way up, and knock him off the edge of the cliff..."
... and he seemed like such a nice librarian, too...
A few years ago, Microprose brought out Geoff Crammond's Formula One for the Commodore Amiga, and I used to love playing it with my friend John - but we got sick and tired of just driving around the courses... So what we'd do was switch off all the "baby" controls (auto-direction-correction, braking, damage limitation), and drive the wrong way around the course, seeing how many cars we could smash up before being totalled ourselves... Then in 1997, Sales Curve Interactive / GT Interactive produced Carmageddon - and with it, all of mine and John's dreams came true... The game is so violent, in fact, with some added profanity, that the game had to be released with an 18 certificate...
Carmageddon is set in a post-apocalyptic future, where the world is (almost) deserted, and gas-guzzling, armour-laden, four-wheeled killing machines zoom, crash and generally bludgeon their way through the people, the scenery and each other... Ostensibly, the idea of Carmageddon is to drive around the courses as fast as possible, racing through the checkpoints and gaining credits. Ho hum. But where this game differs from all the other racing games out there is the fact that you can
(a) drive almost ANYWHERE on the course and not be penalised for it;
(b) smash into other cars;
(c) run down helpless pedestrians, zombies (??) and cows... Roadkill stew, anyone?
In fact, doing any or all of the above will not only add valuable seconds to your clock, but also puts credits in your pocket... fancy end-over-end 360-degree twister action will get you a Cunning Stunt Bonus (don't say this while drunk!), killing numerous pedestrians at once scores you a Combo Bonus - the list goes on. Additionally, if you manage to write off all of your opponents before completing the track by (*yawn*) normal means, then you automatically win!
Littered around the course are bonuses, ranging from a few measly credits to (temporary) add-ons, including free repairs (always nice to have), turbo boosts and so on. One particularly amusing bonus is simply entitled Bouncy Bouncy - your car's suspension goes mental, and starts boinging you into the air; don't hope for much in the way of control, however... Expect even *less* control in Pinball Mode, where a single smash can send you rocketing off the walls like - well, like a pinball, really... Mummy, my head hurts... and my arms... and legs... owwwwwww...
If, however, you get lost (despite the presence of a radar map to try to get you back on the path of unrighteousness) and you run out of time, or you don't have enough credits to effect repairs on your car, then you're out of the game - and there ain't no room for lightweights in THIS race... Grrrrrr...
Your credits can help you out in several ways. First of all - and perhaps most importantly - they can be used during the game to have repairs done on your car... But there's none of this poncy pit-stop nonsense - oh no: all the repairs are carried out as you move - just whack the repair key a few times, and the dents, engine damage and so on are fixed as if by magic; Schumacher and co would *kill* for a feature like this!
Second, should you become incapacitated - usually trapped inside your car, upside down with no momentum to get you back the right way up for a Cunning Stunt Bonus - then you can have your car picked up and plonked back on the road, ready for more of the same - for a fee.
Finally, between races you have the chance (if you have sufficient credits) to purchase swanky new accessories for your car - beefier engines, stronger body armour and more await your patronage... and you're going to need them for the higher levels.
Speaking of which, you have an initial rank of 99, and there's only a certain number of tracks available to you. The more damage you do, and the more races you win, the higher you climb... with more crazed tracks being opened up to you for more Hell-raising lunacy. But note that open tracks can be played in any order, and as many times as you like, even if you've completed them. This is sometimes necessary, particularly in later levels of the game, when you've not quite got enough of a rank increase to bring up any more tracks to explore (and destroy).
The tracks themselves are downright manic - by this, I don't mean that the tarmac starts leaping up and down in your face, telling ridiculous jokes (that's my job), but twist and turn all over the place, and you're further hampered by water, ice, sand and other features designed to give you the worst possible time as you plough your way around... As I said, you can drive pretty much anywhere on these courses - up hill and down dale, through back alleys in the city tracks, and in some cases, underwater! It's worth venturing off the beaten path, too, because more of those bonuses can be found for you to gather - often in some very difficult-to-access locations...
While all of this goes on, your avatar driver (you can choose male or female - you don't have to be a bloke to have four-wheeled bloodlust) can be seen in the Pratcam window to the left of the screen, being bounced and slammed around as you guide the car through this man-made mayhem, screaming, yelling and muttering choice Anglo-Saxon phrases. It really makes you wonder if the drivers are human, because with all the stuff you put them through, they're lucky to still be breathing... Driver's airbag? We don't need no steenking driver's airbag...!
There's a saying which springs to mind as I write this review - "It isn't that you won or lost, but how you played the game", and it pretty much sums up the idea for Carmageddon. For example, there's no qualifying as such needed to reach the next track - you don't even need to finish first. All you have to do is finish *at all*... It's an incredible way of letting out the day's tension, smashing into cars, performing a quick tyre-track tattoo job on the locals, and keeping the fast-food joints equipped with more ground beef than they know what to do with.
The graphics are not much to write home about - this game was written for DOS (it can be played through Win9x, however), so we're talking low-res screens here. That said, who cares? It's in full 3D without the need for a swanky graphics card, and it fair zips along, even with slower machines (I first played it quite happily on a 16MB-loaded Pentium 133, and only a few features were lost for the sake of the frame rate). You won't have time to admire the view, especially when some metal-jacketed marauder is screaming towards you, planning to turn your car into something the Fire Brigade would take three weeks to open with a chainsaw!
The sound is all it needs to be without being over-the-top - the whine of the engine, the bashing and crashing noises, and the satisfying wet splatter as some carbon-based lifeform is spread thinly over your front bumper. Chances are that you'll be adding a few yourself without the aid of the PC - "Come back here, you motherlovin' sonofa -- aaaargh!"
It's the gameplay which really makes Carmageddon - which is what counts for a game's longevity. The whole principle is blindingly simple - none of this "turn round three times, jump up to the Cavern of Doom, swing across the rope and avoid the spikes" rubbish... If it moves, smash into it; if it doesn't move, smash into it anyway! Your car isn't equipped with bombs, or lasers, or nuclear missiles - all you've got is four or five tons of armour-plating on wheels, equipped with an engine to scare the pants off a Formula One mechanic. Trust me - it's all you need... If you're lucky enough to have a LAN, then you can hook up with some suitably lunatic friends to try to destroy each other; if not, then the single-player mode is very playable - the computer players' AI gives you just the right level of challenge; not so easy as to become boring, but not so hard as to make it a chore.
Yes, it's violent - and I'll probably get dragged into a debate about encouraging such stuff - which is why it's got that 18 certificate. Assuming that the vast majority of people who populate this world have the same mental safeguards, then go and let your hair down with this game. It's a stress-reliever which is *not* to be missed... and these days, you can get it either by itself as a budget title, or as part of a compilation - either way, it's worth shelling out for.
And remember: He who fights and runs away... is getting a long run-up to finish you off...
The popular (and slightly notorious) racing game with a twist. Like the old movie Death Race 2000, Carmageddon allows the drivers to accumulate points...More at Amazon Marketplace
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