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Carmageddon: Max Damage Review

Carmageddon: Max Damage Review

More Like Carma-bleh-don

OK, so there’s one rule that reigns in the world of “twisted and wrong” video games. If you’re going to go there, go big. Go wild. Scream it to the rafters. If you’re going to have a game about wrecking cars and running over pedestrians, it’s gotta be larger than life and deliciously insane. You can’t go halfway, or it all falls flat. Your players are expecting South Park -style explosive gas, but they end up with nothing but a sad, wet fart.

Carmageddon: Max Damage disobeys that rule in a big way. I warned this might be the case a few weeks back. Not only does this vehicular combat title fail to go big, it’s practically stalled at the starting gate. There’s no splashy, hilarious intro video for these supposedly mad drivers who are going on a rampage for no apparent reason. There’s just a clunky main menu that dumps you into your first “race” with no explanation or exposition.

Carmageddon: Max Damage Screenshot

There’s a bit of hope as you get tutorial prompts. The tutorial UI is splashy and full of personality. It’s just too bad that once those prompts leave the screen, it appears that the designers neglected to add any personality to the game itself. You’ll be racing your fairly ordinary car (with perhaps a few pointy bits stuck to it) through various landscapes, each of which approach the Platonic ideal of uninspired design. Ooh, generic city with muddy textures. Ooh, generic island with muddy textures and guys in yellow nuclear waste cleanup suits for some reason. Ooh, generic brown desert with muddy mud textures. Ooh, generic, inoffensive metal backing tracks.

Things don’t get any better when you tune into the action instead of the atmosphere. I’m not a racing game pro by any means, but I know the feeling that a good one gives you, where you have a sense of how fast you’re going and how the physics will work. There’s none of that here. Cars seem to go from 0 directly to 60 and fly through the air with the slightest provocation. Hit a bump at high speed, go flying. Hit that same bump at the lowest speed you can manage – go flying. There’s very little sense of precision or control.

Carmageddon: Max Damage Screenshot

Steering isn’t much better. It’s so oversensitive that it goes past absurd to frustrating. The hand brake is of little use unless you’d like to pull a quick 180 (though tap it a nanosecond too long and you’ll be doing a 360 instead). Some of the upgraded cars you can earn do control a bit better than the starter cars, but that doesn’t help the wonky physics or the fact that you can’t drift. Oh, and if you want to see what’s going on around you or who’s coming after you? Good luck adjusting the camera to any setting but “jumpy jackrabbit.” Believe me, I tried.

Carmageddon: Max Damage Screenshot

Fine then, so it doesn’t drive well, but what about the combat? Smashing into other cars can be entertaining at first, but it quickly becomes same-y and tiresome. Hit a car a few times and some parts come flying off it. Yours come off, too, but you can repair them with the press of a button. Hit an enemy vehicle hard enough or long enough and it kind of goes “spla-poof” and fire comes out of it. You’ve wrecked it. Woo? The explosions aren’t even any good!

Want to get a forbidden thrill from one of Carmageddon ‘s big selling points, maximum pedestrian carnage? You won’t get one from plowing through these poorly-modeled, boring people. They have no personality aside from the varying outfits that they wear. There’s little impact when you hit them, just the occasional flying body part. Their sound effects are dull. In fact, you barely notice them aside from the occasional pop-up that you’ve gotten extra points for “bacon splatter” or whatever. Pedestrian carnage may not be my personal preferred brand of humor, but I can’t imagine this getting more than the occasional chuckle even out of those who enjoy it.

Carmageddon: Max Damage Screenshot

How about those awesome power-ups that the game advertises? Maybe they’re out there, but the ones I found were either dull or confusing. Your car can turn to granite, but it doesn’t seem to drive any differently. You can make the arms come off the local pedestrians or make them dance, but neither of those things is even funny because of how poorly the peds are modeled. Even the best of the power-ups I found came with so few audiovisual bells and whistles that it was hard to get excited about them – though there was that one time I started hearing the Hallelujah Chorus every ten seconds for no apparent reason. That was weird.

When I first learned about Carmageddon: Max Damage , I worried that it looked like an ill-begotten attempt to recapture the glory of a silly game from the ’90s. It doesn’t even get that far. In fact, I kind of wish I could bash it for going too far, like Duke Nukem Forever . No, this is just a game that feels half-assed from tip to toe. You can probably extend your enjoyment briefly by playing online against your friends, but there are just so many other, better novelty car games you could be playing. Go grab Mario Kart , Rocket League , Mad Max … hell, go grab that old copy of Twisted Metal Black . Just give Carmageddon: Max Damage a skip. It doesn’t deserve your time and money.

RATING OUT OF 5 RATING DESCRIPTION 2.4 Graphics
The UI looks great! Too bad the rest of the game is all muddy textures and personality-free areas and vehicles. 2.5 Control
Overly twitchy, especially the camera, and frustratingly low-impact when it comes to combat. 2.5 Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
Generic, lazy metal soundtrack and low-octane sound effects fail to excite. 2.0 Play Value
Despite some varying maps, vehicles, and course goals, Max Damage just isn’t interesting or exciting enough to inspire extended play. 2.4 Overall Rating – Poor
Not an average. See Rating legend below for a final score breakdown.

Review Rating Legend
0.1 – 1.9 = Avoid 2.5 – 2.9 = Average 3.5 – 3.9 = Good 4.5 – 4.9 = Must Buy
2.0 – 2.4 = Poor 3.0 – 3.4 = Fair 4.0 – 4.4 = Great 5.0 = The Best

Game Features:

  • Over 30 vehicles!
  • Over 60 unique campaign events!
  • Over 100 in game collectables!
  • 6 person online multiplayer!
  • Crazy and unique PowerUps!
  • More pedestrian types than ever!

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