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 Combat Racing Vehicular Combat 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 TDR 2000
For my awful video review (first attempt at one, give me a break lol), watch here: https://youtu.be/nGze6QoI_hY
Intro
By far the most underrated game I’ve ever played. It’s my favourite in the series, despite it always having been considered the red-headed step child within the Carmageddon family. Totally unique, but also the only racing game I can call ‘atmospheric’. A serious blast and a worthy successor to Carmageddon II and the original in every single way. At least most of us can agree it’s better than Max Damage, right?
– Real player with 199.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Combat Racing Multiplayer Games.
Carmageddon TDR 2000 is a fun game,once you become acustomed to its idiosynchrocies. Most modern computers experience a glitch caused by an antiquated Mip map and vertex fog better handled by Voodoo Rush and TNT Riva cards of yesteryear. The fix is simple: backup your game cache through Steam first. browse Local Files, Open GFX file with Word Pad. Scroll to line 74 and edit line which reads all twos. Change last two to a zero, Save and done. The game has 25 races and 25 missions. For help with missions check out ZodApe’s YewTewb Channel. I have seen complaints on here about the game is broken,too hard,not enough time etc. Yet i imagine these same complainers plow happily throught the latest NFS broken crap because the Dice Team made it and they made Call of Droopy Diaties. Blow that! Need more money to buy that sweet Hotty? Try racing the first level in The 20’s and for the love of Pete,mow down every ped on the sidewalks. Keep those Combo Multiplies spinning and you will make serious bank ~ $250K - $600K per play through. Race it over and over until you have serious ends. Also the Train Station generously has Armor,Power and Slots All Around so you need not buy those,merely fill them for more even more nefarious power. Do You need more time? Use a bigger and slower car to hammer the competition. The “Jaws” car is a personal fave. Most Opponent Wasteds yield an extra minute and sometimes more added game play time. Is this game for everyone? Hell no! You have to work hard to succeed. Without some skin in the game there can be no reward. This is a game from fifteen years past when games were brutal but satisfying because you felt like you had accomplished something. if it is too hard then maybe Mario Kart or one of it’s Brawzillion spinoffs is a better bet for you. Thanks for reading,be safe,keep well and happy gaming Playa.
– Real player with 67.3 hrs in game
Carmageddon Max Pack
Carmageddon is an amazing, unique game and one of my all-time favourites. For that alone, I have to recommend it. That being said, the version being offered here is frankly quite terrible.
You get to choose between software mode and 3dfx mode. Software mode is visually outdated even by 1997 standards, so most people will play the 3dfx version. Both options run in DOSBox - and while I think there are good DOSBox ports out there, this is not one of them. The menus and cinematics tend to be completely broken. With some config modifications, you can get the 3dfx version to run in a decent resolution (and without stretching) and improve the terrible sprite pop-in, but I’ve been unable to fix the framerate in any way - and it is awful. These are “only” technical issues, but they’re serious enough that I can’t honestly recommend playing this specific version of the game.
– Real player with 48.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Combat Racing Classic Games.
Intro
The original Carmageddon is nothing short of a blast to play. However, the Steam port is absolute dogshit. The game only runs with DOSBox and if you choose to play with NGlide, no matter the resolution or graphical detail, you will
not be getting a solid 60fps with drops down to even 20fps regularly. I have a GTX1060 and an i5 4460 and it doesn’t matter. It runs like trash. I would only recommend this on Steam if you don’t mind very low framerates or don’t
care about using DOSBox. It’s unfortunate that Stainless hasn’t decided to update the compatibility because if they did I could easily wholeheartedly recommend this fantastic game.
– Real player with 36.0 hrs in game
Clutch
This was nice to play. People who like Carmageddon will probably like this
Positives:
Good graphics quality. Really good I guess for the time of the release, no worse than in more recent Carmageddon: Reincarnation
Fun physics
Nice maps with destructive elements and stuff like ramps or tunnels to perform stunts
Cars eating zombies
Cars setting zombies on fire
Cars getting energy from eating and dismembering zombies for a nitro boost
You get to race and eat zombies with your car inside the Large Hadron Collider
– Real player with 15.8 hrs in game
It’s really hard for me to recommend Clutch, even despite me spending 11 hours of my life playing it.
For one, the PS3 version is the definitive version of the game with many improvements which I will mention later.
This game had so much potential but unfortunately, it just comes off as rushed halfway.
Only 3 cars out of 8 are customizable, and they have some cars shown in the concept art that don’t appear in the game at all. The races are too easy and the car collisions are really bad, you’ll ram some cars at full speed and they would BARELY get any damage.
– Real player with 11.9 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
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
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
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
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
Road Z : The Last Drive
A nice little arcade driving game from a singel dev.
You drive, and upgrade to get further before the gas runs out or Zeds trash your car. (or like me, like a magnet going head on into every exploding barrel on the road) ^^
You can leave the car to take your revenge on zombies showing them the pointy end of your knife, also upgrade materials kan be found on foot in houses etc for some extra boost to upgrading your car.
For me this game is fun, I like the grinding to get to the next checkpoint and the “strategic” element in balancing what to upgrade and choosing when to avoid or hit zombies to get as far as possible.
– Real player with 6.1 hrs in game
Apparently I’m one of only 2% of people who have stuck with this game to make it through the 2nd stage (4 stages total). For 4Gb worth of content, there really isn’t much to this game. The driving is fun, and so is upgrading the cars, but it honestly feels like it should be part of a bigger game. If this were a full RPG with the ability to drive around too. I would love it…however as it stands, it has to little content, way to much grind for what little content there is and I’m left with the feeling that this could be so much better if there were just …more to it
– Real player with 4.4 hrs in game
AK-xolotl: Wars
What happens when you combine a hungry axolotl with an AK? You get a ‘lotl of killing!
AK-xolotl: Wars is a 4 player top-down arcade battle arena shooter set in the AK-xolotl universe. You’re an axolotl with an AK (duh!) that goes on a rampage, shooting down their next meal! Play with your friends and hunt down your meal together!
Team up with up to 3 friends and work together in order to dominate the leaderboards!
Face off against increasingly chaotic waves of walking preys, with the aid of powerful weaponry and abilities. Team up with your friends, hunt your meal and feed the baby axolotls who look insanely bad-ass with a gun.
Want to impress the community? The more enemies you demolish, the higher your score! Keep it going and you’ll be splashing onto the leaderboards in no time.
Fun fact: Did you know Axolotls can regenerate their limbs?
Some of AK-xolotl’s features are:
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Tons of different weapons w/ stat Roles and rare variants
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Multiple power-ups to beef up your Axolotl
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Over 20 types of enemies, Axolotl’s meal will be buffet style!
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3 maps with multiple variations
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Cute unlockable skins
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Fully supported online leaderboards