I’ve been meaning to review carmageddon for a long time but haven’t been able to find the time to write it up. I’ve been a fan of carmageddon for years. Since the first release on the PC I can remember my 3DFX graphics card clicking into gear and the game starting up in glorious 3DFX graphics. All crisp and smooth. Friends would watch on in awe, as on their pc the game looked blocky and rubbish and we had super fast frame rates and insane graphics.
Of course we had the version with blood & pedestrians, not the post public outcry version with green blood & zombies. We played this game relentlessly. Unlocking all the cars but never knowing just how to unlock them. You play it enough and it just happens.
I must have committed hours and hours of my life to this game as a youngster and year after year I’ve come back to play it. Most recently, without access to a PC capable of playing the game I’ve resorted to running it virtually on the Mac with various patches and fixes to just run it.
Then, on twitter, I saw that the original team where running a kickstarter campaign to bring this game to modern hardware. So a donation and a little while later I had the game on my iPad. Wow, I’m impressed. The hardware I used to require to run this game was, at the time, cutting edge. This game now runs on my iPad with no fuss & mega frame rates. At first I thought the on screen controls would be cumbersome but you quickly get to grips with them and it’s mega.
This game is like the best trip down memory lane, and unlike most nostalgia, it lives upto your memory. I got the game for free on release day and instantly paid to gain access to the complete set of maps. You can complete a level in this game in two ways. Firstly, you can race a traditional race. Complete all the checkpoints before your opponents and win the race. Alternatively, and always my chosen method, you can hunt down each of your opponents and destroy their cars. I became a master at this as a teen and I’m glad to see I still have the knack.
You earn credits for killing pedestrians, wasting opponents and collecting power ups. These can be redeemed in return for more armour, power and offensive parts in the garage. Get your car upto full bars for each and you are going to storm the opposition.
The game provides a load of maps to play and each race always pans out differently so it’s really hard to tire of. I love it and the iOS port is genius.
I do hope they bring out a mac version as I would love to return to a keyboard layout, but the iOS version means I can sit in starbucks wasting opponents and sipping a latte. Not bad.
The physics in this game are excellent. The power ups are a lot of fun and with infinite possibilities I’m sure you will be hooked too.
One criticism would be the lack of vocabulary for max damage, but this port stays true to the original so I wouldn’t have expected them to add extra vocab.
Buy this game and get playing.
