Carmageddon: Max Damage
Before We Begin
Before I start please be aware that as a modder of this game I do have some bias and I really love this series I wlll try and remain as objective as possible with this review.
TLDR
Carmageddon Max Damage is a game with cars. You play as a car that should ram other cars, run over pedestrians, do insane stunts, and use insane and zany powerups to help do all of the above. You can also ‘race’ and do the laps but really why would you. I personally wouldn’t even qualify Carmageddon as a racing game, its more like a character action game where the people are replaced with vehicles. It is a niche game that doesn’t try and appeal to the mass market. While there is some attempt at ‘tutorials’ the game does very little in the form of hand holding and if you are the type of person who enjoys sandbox fun combined with cars and silly humor then this game is for you and is well worth the price.
– Real player with 151.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Automobile Sim Combat Racing Games.
Carmageddon: Max Damage isn’t a racing game in a traditional sense. It doesn’t involve speeding around the Nurburgring in order to get the fastest lap time. It doesn’t revolve around unlocking photo-realistic vehicles, customization options, and story cutscenes. CMD doesn’t have you analyzing upgrade specs to try and get the perfect balance of speed, weight, and cornering. CMD is, “the ultimate antidote to racing games,” indeed.
At its core, CMD is a toybox; a collection of digital Hot Wheels cars that you smash together over and over to the cackling of your inner child. The game’s core mechanics encourage destruction and doughnuts, discouraging actual racing, which is absurdly therapeutic. Instead of getting time penalties for taking shortcuts through the grass as the cardboard cutout crowd stares at the action blankly, a la Forza, in Carmageddon everything the game is composed of discourages you from following the checkpoints present in each large, open map. Though there is a more structured campaign mode, it’s really just a slightly limited freeplay mode with uninteresting and tedious progression. I have never touched the multiplayer in my 62 hours playing, but I can tell you the competitive modes in single player are not engaging nor do they compliment the game’s mechanics. Carmageddon is a one trick pony that knows that trick very, very well. Upon choosing freeplay mode, you have the option to choose which race and car you want. The races in the game are made up of roughly 10 maps with several different checkpoint layouts. These races may also have different minor changes in scenery, changes in pedestrian placement, and changes in powerup placement. The cars all have different specs including top speed, attack power, and strength, but these are ultimately nullified by the game’s mechanics. Choose whichever looks the coolest and get going. As soon as the race loads you have the option to start before the countdown finishes, triggering a minimal credit cost. After that, the player is completely free to abandon all the opponents in search of powerups and pedestrians, ram right into the closest opponent, or, if there’s something truly wrong with you, attempt to complete all laps as fast as you can. Kill all the peds (takes forever), finish all laps in first (BOOORING), or wreck all your opponents to complete the race. There are a multitude of bells and whistles that make this simple formula work. One of Carmageddon’s signature features is its ridiculous cartoon physics. All the cars are as bouncy as marshmallows and flop around the levels with delightful imprecision. Twisted Metal is to Devil May Cry is as Carmageddon is to Goat Simulator. The game fundamentally is made to create slapstick comedy moments that prevent it from getting old. You may completely miss a turn, throwing you into a minefield, which then throws you into a pinball mode powerup, which then sends the entire map into chaos. You may also make one wrong calculation, end up flat against a wall, and get wrecked in the first 30 seconds. This is all moot, though, as Carmageddon is played more or less in god mode the entire time. Don’t like how beat up your car is? Hit repair twice and watch all your pieces come flying back to you. End up on your roof? Hit recover a couple of times and land gently back on your wheels in another part of the level. There is basically no way to lose Carmageddon unless you choose to restrict the mechanics yourself. This makes for a very passive and stress-free experience. The damage model is another part of Carma’s claim to fame. Before the days of Flatout and Wreckfest, Carmageddon boasted its extremely detailed destructibility and delighted players with exquisite mangled cars. The destructibility in CMD is top notch, though perhaps less impressive in today’s game landscape. Doors and hoods flap open, hitboxes become comically crushed, and your driver can get thrown out of the windshield, leaving the vehicle to drive itself. Some of CMD’s powerups exploit the damage model extremely. The ‘ave a Banana ray twists the front and rear of your opponents making them look like a crescent moon with wheels and the Splitter Ray leaves half of your victim spinning around in circles desperately trying to navigate the level. Remember when I said the game is geared towards comedy? That’s embedded in everything from game mechanics to the text descriptions and sound clips. Carma’s developers are obsessed with dirty puns and will have you rolling your eyes immediately. Aside from the vanilla CMD package, the PC version is especially worthwhile due to fantastic modding by Mad Mike. The base vehicles are fine and bring many original designs to life, but all are very over-the-top and toy-like. Mike’s extensive catalog of more realistic vehicles truly adds a layer of enjoyment to the game that can’t be ignored.
– Real player with 99.0 hrs in game
Carmageddon 2: Carpocalypse Now
Intro
Loved this game for ages, but the flaws are evident and have really stopped me from enjoying it as much lately. It’s unique and you’re not going to get a similar experience from many other games. If it weren’t for the gameplay flaws,
this game would be my second favourite Carmageddon, but they’re just too big to miss.
The Great:
++Destruction looks amazing. It’s as good as Max Damage.
++Base gameplay is so much fun. Like the first game, except improved in every single way (except where it didn’t)
– Real player with 94.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Automobile Sim Combat Racing Games.
This game is the most epically entertaining way to waste your readily rather spent hours of a short life. What makes this game good then:
- Still pretty nice damage physics. Seriously. Game is nearly two decades old yet has dynamic deformation of cars, no premodeled damage. You can even split vehicles in half, at any angle..and yet even keep driving depending on how you got split. It’s also cool how your driving is handicapped by getting damage. If your engine takes damage, car accelerates slower. If powertrain takes damage, your car will start braking randomly inadvertently. If your wheels get damage, they’ll wobble and make your car lean constantly to the given side when driving and steering will become harder. If suspension takes damage, your car will steer randomly on it’s own.
– Real player with 47.9 hrs in game
Zombie Derby
2d side scrooler drive with obstacles. You need to repeat races to gain coins to upgrade to get further to discover new maps and vehicles. Not many maps but a god 2-3 hour fun to finish the game. Maybe another 1-2 hours for the expert challenges. A bit of fun if you waiting for the post man to arrive
– Real player with 3.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Automobile Sim Action Games.
A decent “Earn to Die” clone. Sure, it’ll only take a couple of hours to earn all the achievements, but there’s more to do in the game afterwards. Plus it goes on sale for less than the game it pays tribute to, which is a bonus.
– Real player with 2.9 hrs in game
RAGE 2
“When things go wrong, don’t go with them.”
~Elvis Presley
First of all, this game is not nearly as bad as you may have probably heard or expected by looking at “mixed reviews” status in Steam. Personally? I’ve enjoyed my time here quite a lot. It’s just… OK, it won’t be so easy to explain. See, the biggest problem with RAGE 2 is that it is… RAGE 2. I mean, Avalanche Studios? The guys did a pretty nice job here. The core mechanics is very solid, leveling system is kinda great (seriously, I totally enjoyed it), gameplay is very fast-paced, like in all those modern incarnations of the old titles like DOOM, Shadow Warrior and the others, while Apex Engine provides surprisingly solid FPS on highest settings in 4K. Even on pretty old hardware. When I’ve started playing through the tutorial mission? I was like “Wait just a minute, why everybody hates this game so much?!” Then I played a bit more and was like “Ah, OK, I see it now…”. See, even though core mechanics is very nice, the idea of wasting it on resurrecting RAGE? It was terrible.
– Real player with 133.6 hrs in game
I would not recommend Rage 2 to a fan of the series. I would not recommend Rage 2 to a newcomer to the series. It is a painfully mediocre game crippled by the fact it is open world.
If you want a game for world exploration and discovery, go play Fallout New Vegas. If you want a game with epic guns and action, go play Doom. This blends the two genres and makes them both worse.
Design:
I believe if Rage 2 was designed to be linear, or at most a wide corridor, we could have had an exceptional game on our hands with more fleshed out mechanics. The thing is…. That would have made it similar to Id Software’s other title: Doom. Now it’s conspiracy theory time here but perhaps there was pressure on the Rage 2 team to force the open world genre (which was on-trend at the time) as to not create competition between the 2 titles.
– Real player with 63.9 hrs in game
Grand Theft Auto 2
This GTA is different due to the camera angle, it has more of a 2D feel to it. However the idea is the same, open world game where you steal cars, kill people and explore. The cities are like levels, you beat a city and then go to the next one. There are 3 of them and each city has 3 gangs. The thing is, you can’t travel from one city to another. Instead you gotta choose them from the menu. The way you beat them is a little different too. Instead of completing specific missions, or a number of missions, in this one you gotta reach a specific amount of money. The money system is a little bit different in this game as you get money from kills and vehicles destroyed. Missions will give you money too. So you got 2 options : Either join a gang and complete missions for them or destroy everything until you reach the amount of money needed. Be careful with gangs, respect is everything! The more you kill other gang members the more likely you will get attacked when you enter their area (kinda similar to San Andreas).
– Real player with 466.9 hrs in game
This GTA is different due to the camera angle, it has more of a 2D feel to it. However the idea is the same, open world game where you steal cars, kill people and explore. The cities are like levels, you beat a city and then go to the next one. There are 3 of them and each city has 3 gangs. The thing is, you can’t travel from one city to another. Instead you gotta choose them from the menu. The way you beat them is a little different too. Instead of completing specific missions, or a number of missions, in this one you gotta reach a specific amount of money. The money system is a little bit different in this game as you get money from kills and vehicles destroyed. Missions will give you money too. So you got 2 options : Either join a gang and complete missions for them or destroy everything until you reach the amount of money needed. Be careful with gangs, respect is everything! The more you kill other gang members the more likely you will get attacked when you enter their area (kinda similar to San Andreas).
– Real player with 39.0 hrs in game
Blood Drift
Just a little time waster. Kinda like popping bubble wrap. Get it on sale.
– Real player with 6.5 hrs in game
very good and basic
i like it
le wow
– Real player with 2.6 hrs in game
Dude Simulator 3
Worth checking out.
Cool little game, fun to play around in. Bought it for my friend too, (on sale for .45) and he also had alot of fun.
Can be confusing, but most of the time its basic, although it does have alot of glitches.
Also fun to try and speedrun, even though that its pointless. Infinite amount of glitches, teleporting, launching, phasing, etc. Even managed to get on top of a few buildings on the city level.
– Real player with 181.9 hrs in game
First off this game is amazing, it has great graphics, amazing controls, and really fun to play as a sandbox and not using the story, but there are a few things that I dislike, the first thing is that when running around shooting people and driving, it always seems to become 15 police officers chasing you around just trying to kill you, the last thing is that NPCs are really hostile and will try to kill you even from you spitting on them. Apart from that I would highly recommend this game.
– Real player with 3.8 hrs in game
Flatout 3: Chaos & Destruction
DON’T BUY if you expect Flatout!
I played Flatout: Ultimate Carnage and Flatout 2 a lot and some day I saw Flatout 3 on sale for around 5 $. Totally blinded by the awesomeness of the previous Flatout games by Bugbear I ran into this trap without checking what I was actually buying…
After playing maybe like 30 minutes I was really disappointed since I expected something like a worthy successor for Ultimate Carnage which Flatout 3 clearly is NOT. I uninstalled the game and considered this my worst game investment ever.
– Real player with 19.6 hrs in game
(Game was gifted to me by a friend, hence why I’m tagging it as having received the game for free.)
Having the (dis)honour of being one of few items on the Steam storefront to hold an “Overwhelmingly Negative” review score among Steam users, FlatOut 3: Chaos & Destruction is an absolute travesty of a FlatOut game, if not of a video game in general. One does not even need previous experience with the preceding titles in the series; even outside of comparisons to its vastly superior predecessors, FlatOut 3 falls flatout on its face.
– Real player with 6.2 hrs in game
WARMA
The game have jobs/cars/weapons/foods/ and more,is very early for the game,but for that we are play early games,to help devs with reporting bugs etc,go warma GO!! :)
– Real player with 16.4 hrs in game
This game will be good after a few updates.
And more structure and Translations.
Get it if you want to support the developers.
Dont get it if you want a completed game straight away.
– Real player with 3.7 hrs in game
Grand Theft Auto IV: Complete Edition
Great game, maybe even the best GTA. One of my personal favorites for sure. Which is why I’m sad to say I’m currently uninstalling this game. Not because it’s bad, but instead because Rockstar Games/Take Two are horrible corporations. I have bought this game 3 times and of those 3 versions it is seemingly apparent the only 1 I actually own is my physical Xbox 360 copy. Being forced to use the Rockstar Launcher is already a violation of our rights, then they have the balls to pull down this REQUIRED Launcher at ANY moment in time. Do yourself a favor and find another way to own this game. The further you rid yourself of the plague that is Rockstar Games and their launcher the better off you’ll be. Otherwise, 10/10 game(w/ mods to fix Rockstar’s mess of course).
– Real player with 147.2 hrs in game
Grand Theft Auto IV & Episodes From Liberty City is 10/10 in story and fun missions & side activities to do. and please if you don’t own this game yet I highly recommend you to get it on a sale or something before R* release the Gta IV remaster in 2023 because they’ll remove this game in the future and we all know that the OG games are always better than a remastered game that’s made by a company who’s making mobile ports. so please buy this it’s better to be safe than sorry.
– Real player with 89.3 hrs in game