Car Description: "Bubble Eyed"

The original engine of Carmageddon has been overhauled with a newer version, which runs much better then the one that appeared back in Carmageddon 2 but it still lacks the speed and smoothness that Carmageddon 1 was blessed with, especially when doing reverses to a lot of background scenery. The overall presentation is what one might expect in the year 2000, and in terms of computer game graphics, there's the usual dosh of special effects which all look dandy but nothing of the sort that would really impress you (hardly anything is today).

The main concern of Carmageddon is of course the cars, and the game always had a trademark of weird and at the same time cool looking cars with different contraptions to cause damage to both pedestrian and other car drivers, but Carmageddon 2000 fails to follow this tradition. There some really nicely made cars to see, but none of which are as stylish as the original's offerings, and instead of being something that you would marvel at and try to obtain, they tend to be poorly textured and very generic.

The game does feature some impressive car damage effects though. Both on your car and on others with various bits of automabilia flying around (especially after a chicken fight with a 4 by 4 and a saloon car) it's just sad that other Pedestrian cars do not have the same effect, which would have been great as there are also many variations of them like small pick ups, family cars, 4 by 4's and loads of trucks. A few things that I did detested about Carmageddon's new engine is the amount of smudgy artwork it contains, it looks all very blurred and unclear which gives the game cheap looks, thankfully I solved this later after minor tweaking in the graphics options. While I'm complaining I might as well mention over use of the color red, okay I know this is supposed to be a game with a lot of blood and gore but do you really have to put it in the menus and font? Needless to say this makes reading the fonts hard.

Radio Station DooM

The sound effects in Carmageddon are a let down; it feels like all the sound effects are ripped from Carmageddon 1 and 2, giving the game I heard-this-before feel. In addition, Torus has added audio responses from the other drives which makes ramming and abusing them that much fun, imagine my surprise when I got rammed and a voice called, out "you're gonna die" I was deeply offended and momentarily executed the other driver, ah pure bliss. On the musical side, it's much better, Torus Games has hired an actually 2 bands called "Utah Saint" and "Plague" to do the soundtrack. The resulting music fits the game like a glove with some good scores (My favourite being the title theme), the only problem is that it's all very industrial and heavy metal, I know it fits the games environment but they could have changed direction a little, to keep it original and not a mass repeating of music that in essence sounds nearly the same.

Conclusion

Carmageddon 200 TDR is a slight disappointment, it has not reached the potential that it easily could have with more concentration on features of the game, because the gameplay is essentially there, it just has to be perfected with better graphics and features. For fans of Carmageddon (like me) this is great, a 20th century update of a favourite, but for new buyers I strongly recommend a consideration of other titles that will be coming in the near future, before possible purchase.

by Fred 'Doomie' Agza

Graphics - 6.0 Sound - 5.0 Gameplay - 8.0 Originality - 9.0
Overall - 6.5/10

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