Carmageddon Max Pack

I'm leaving this at 1 star, if it shows as 5 then gog's changed my reviews again

Carmageddon is a game, which strives to uproot stereotypes both in terms of traditional racing games, and behavioral norms. It is rude, loud and chaotic and that is good. :-) There is a lot of swearing (for a 90s non-shooter game), rather wanton murder and pure, glorious chaos as you will be rammed by the other racers left and right. It is excellent for a few minutes of non-sence mindless fun. The graphics are dated, but this is to be expected, it got released in 1997 after all. When it got released it received pretty universal praise over "daring" (see above), having decent graphics (for the time) and, in a way, diving into the human psyche of what it could be like to live in a future, when people are bored enough to call races like this "entertainment". Hell - even the pedestrians evoke the image of an extreme version of "running with the bulls" (look it up). But ..... it was made in a very different time, when devs were still experimenting with AI and "making the game needlessly frustrating" was called "added difficulty". The controls of this game are finnicky at best - you lose control of your car most of the time and get rammed (and thus cant control it some more). The AI behaves erratically, sometimes recovering and trying to disable you, other times constantly banging their car against a wall, other times turning around and running (not always when being badly damaged). You gain money from completing races, disabling the vehicles of your opponents is the most profitable way. Disable a cop and you gain an extra rank (ranks are kinda like levels, you start at 100 and work towards rank 1 with upgrades unlocked every 25 ranks), however cops are quite hard. There are only 3 upgrades - engines, hull and offense. Furthermore theres only like 4 maps, you start from different parts of maps to give you an illusion of "hey, wasnt here before!". That being said - there is not much content. This is a 4/10 game for me - below average, building only on shock and gore.

The only better news than seeing this on GOG is the impending release of the new Carmageddon game by Stainless soon. This is right up there with Quake 2 and Total Annihilation as some of the best multi-player action ever to have graced our gaming PCs, and also right up there with XCOM as a true and near perfect original take on a genre.

Sadly none of the launch options work. All i get is the SCi intro and after that a Black Screen. Please fix this.

I've been waiting for this to come out on GOG since they first announced it. This game was the first to take action, black humour and pure fun value. I love this game, can't wait to play more of it. Downloading now...