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Part of my brain wants to say that there isn’t a market for something like Carmageddon: Max Damage any more. In this game you are encouraged to mow down ‘peds’ (pedestrians) of all shapes and sizes, including Daily Mail-outraging targets such as wheelchair users (although they’ll claim less benefits if dead) and nuns. When hit they explode into a mess of blood and body parts. This tone carries throughout the entire game, from the ridiculous difficulty setting descriptions (one references rimming a rhino) to the ‘will definitely cause offense to some’ power up names. There’s even music from bands with names you wouldn’t want to say out loud in front of your elderly mother.
It’s hard to see this appealing to a gaming audience that has been spoilt with quality over the years since Carmageddon’s original release back in 1997, but then what looks cool is very different when you’re a young teen. I remember being 14 and bizarrely interested in running people over in cars. Even though you can now run people over in cars in numerous other titles, I have no doubt that there’s definitely an audience for Carmageddon’s crude throwback to 90s gaming. Whether or not that audience will like the borderline terrible gameplay and ugly visuals is the more important question. I’d wager that most won’t.
Set in an unexplained apocalyptic world where people roam the streets doing nothing, cities are ripped apart, and tricked out cars (that could have been built by the team behind Hypnodisc) race, you are one of said racers. Carmageddon Max Damage includes a pretty beefy career mode that sees you taking part in events (laps, checkpoints, ped destruction, general madness) in order to earn coins to unlock the next wave of events. You lose those some of these coins, however, for making repairs or resetting your position on the track.
There’s also a six-player online multiplayer mode, but here you don’t have any peds wandering about, making the whole thing feel rather sterile. It also removes one of the game’s core mechanics (running people down for money), meaning its omission (no matter the reason) is disappointing.
Yet it’s had to be overly bothered as the handling and its effect on the gameplay is atrocious. Cars, in Carmageddon: Max Damage, don’t turn like you want them to. They are heavy and laborious in their movements, forcing you to make heavy use of the handbrake. It’s not a fun handling model and it absolutely doesn’t work in a game that is partially about arena car combat. When you’re racing around tarmac tracks in a city, you can make do, but the locations with more geometry to negotiate (perhaps as you try to hunt down selected peds before the opposition) expose the handling like a streaker at a funeral.
Upgrade tokens found hidden on the maps can be used to improve your car, and more cars can be unlocked by stealing (wrecking) certain cars on certain races. Upgrades will make whichever vehicle you’re driving a bit more competitive, but sadly not any better to control. Car combat should be fun, yet Carmageddon: Max Damage does everything it can to make the simple art of crashing into each other an incredibly tedious activity.
You also have to contend with AI drivers who are capable of latching on to your car and then ferrying you around like you’re a crate on a forklift, your efforts to break free being largely useless. The AI, which for the most part is braindead and seemingly just as hamstrung by the handling model as you, generally struggles to get to targets, especially if that target is above ground level, so their skill at bulldozing is truly baffling.
Max Damage is an ugly game. You could argue that the developers at Stainless Games have deliberately targeted a retro look, but that doesn’t prevent it from looking drab, empty, poorly textured, low poly, and a bit of a mess. And it takes ages to load each stage. The frame rate also struggles to maintain 30fps, which is shocking given that this is truly on a visual level of a low-grade PS3 release that never made it to retail stores.
I quickly got over being shocked about the content in Carmageddon: Max Damage. It’s a game that’s designed to push buttons and get people up in arms, no matter if they are genuinely bothered by it or not. This misjudged swagger, evident across every part of the experience, could blind you from the game buried underneath, but don’t let it. This is yet another cash-in designed to pull the wool over your eyes. Poor games don’t deserve your attention, no matter how much you liked something in the past.
Version Tested: PS4
