Still Game? is an occasional series in which I replay a game from my youth, to see if it really is as good as I remembered. This week: (nearly) all of the Carmageddon games.
Carmageddon is a racing game series where you smash into other cars and run over pedestrians. If that sounds unpleasant you might want to stop reading.
Carmageddon (1997)
The first Carmageddon caused a huge fuss in the nineties and was censored or banned in many countries, interestingly released ahead of Grand Theft Auto, which came out later the same year.
I don't remember clearly but I think I had a demo that had people with red blood but the full game had been censored to have zombies with green blood. To be fair, it is pretty violent - pedestrians basically explode when you hit them, your car leaving tyre tracks in their blood - all accompanied by screaming and gurgling sound effects.
Despite this it's surprisingly hard to hit pedestrians a lot of the time. The driving model is quite difficult to master, so changing direction at speed tends to result in a spin out. It makes mastering it and successfully negotiating corners a satisfying experience.
The game has its own unique style, obviously strongly influenced by Death Race 2000. The drivers and cars are colourful and outlandish (spikes and blood splatters are a common theme). There are crazy spinning menus and a dismembered hand cursor (complete with little blood drops). There are also a few features I'd completely forgotten about, like the almost indestructible police APCs that hound the player constantly if disturbed.
It's got a wonderful mid-nineties feel to it. The pixellated textures, low draw distance, 2D sprites in an otherwise 3D landscape and slightly shonky animations are all reminiscent of an era before the ridiculous level of detail that features in games today.
It's also arguably open world - races are played across a series of large environments, but there's complete freedom to explore outside of the track, with hard to reach and hidden areas aplenty. You can race, or you can just drive about.
It's also obviously and deliberately fun. The emphasis is on driving and exploring and destruction, and very little gets in the way of that. There's a time limit, but it's easily extended by hitting cars or pedestrians or bonus barrels. You can easily repair your car mid-race and recover it if you get stuck. Both of these things cost credits, but again these are easily earned.
It's bold, brash, stylish and very silly. Basically, it's great, and I'm really enjoying playing it again.
Carmageddon 2: Carpocalypse Now (1998)
I have a lot of good memories of Carmageddon 2. I remember it being bigger and better than the first one - releasing as it did during the era where a sequel meant dramatically better graphics.
Trying it again for the first time was a bit of a let down. The graphics weren't as good as I remembered and the recover key didn't work - so having flipped my car I couldn't do anything but restart the game. The powerup and reverse controls were also bound to the same key, so I got stuck facing a wall several times, and the menu for changing them was buggy and frustrating. Worse, pressing the CTRL key inexplicably caused the race to immediately end, which was particularly annoying as I'd bound it to the powerup key.
The damage model is much more detailed, but it makes the car feel more fragile as a result. Unlike the first game, which only distorted the car when damaged, it's now possible to entirely remove almost any part of it. I once clipped an immovable barrier at high speed and literally tore my car in half - destroying it and ending the race at the same time - something that was impossible in the first game.
It also added missions, events with a specific objective that happened after every three races. They start off quite simply (the first is just a time trial around a track) but then get progressively and sometimes punishingly hard (I've not got past the second yet, where you have to jump between rooftops destroying satellite dishes). It was an interesting idea, but personally I found them an unnecessary addition.
Somehow all these improvements make Carmageddon 2 slightly less fun. The enhanced damage model incites a sense of caution, rather than gleeful recklessness. There seems to be fewer pedestrians to hit, and the other cars are harder to find once the race starts - often more intent on driving round the track than scrapping with the player.
It did add some good features - buying the cars of your opponents is much easier, powerups can be selected through a simple inventory and are more creative (the repulsificator, a giant spring that flies out of your car to repel opponents or pedestrians, is particularly fun) - but overall it doesn't feel quite as entertaining as the original.
Carmageddon TDR 2000 (2000)
If I'm honest, this was the one I was most looking forward to replaying. Not because it was the newest and potentially the best of the three, but because one of the cars you could drive was a black Pontiac Trans Am - basically the car from Knight Rider. I used to play for hours just to drive that car, even if it wasn't a perfect lookalike.
Unfortunately the replay had a rocky start. I couldn't get the reverse key to work, which caused a lot of frustration and aborted races until I realised that 'brake' was actually reverse (reverse apparently did nothing, no matter what key I bound it to). Worse, it seemed impossible to increase the race timer - running over pedestrians and hitting opponents no longer added seconds to the time - so again and again my race would simply end. I think on any difficulty setting other than the easiest, time isn't increased except by finding time bonuses, but they're few and far between, so it seems like an odd design choice.
I've not played much so far, but I think I can say this is definitely not the best of the three. It's just not fun anymore. It's bad enough that you have to constantly worry about running about of time, but now every second race is a mission (again with punishing time limits), the powerups are less fun, and your car seems more fragile than ever. It also doesn't look quite right - the graphics seem barely better if not worse than the second game.
Final thoughts
I like Carmageddon. I know it's violent and in poor taste but that doesn't really bother me - it's a computer game. I'm surprised to find that my favourite is still the first one, despite all the improvements and new ideas that the sequels introduced. Yes, it's violent, and probably best avoided if you don't approve of that sort of thing. But there's a fun game here, and although the sequels might have lost sight of that a little bit, I've still enjoyed playing them again.
And for those of you in the know, I didn't cover the Splat Pack (the addon for the first game, essentially a mini sequel) or the 2016 Carmageddon reboot because I ran out of time writing this article. Maybe next time.