Carmageddon Max Pack

Sometimes you just need a game where you can just shut your brain off and go on an unholy rampage. If you love the movie Death Race 2000, this is an unofficial tie-in of sorts, to a Death Race sequel that never materialized. Even though this is a "racing" game, making it to the finish line isn't the only way to win. You can wreck your opponents cars, or run over all the pedestrians, and boy do they make a gooey mess when you do! While the graphics look very dated, due to being from that early 3D era, its still a very solid game, with lots of great stages and satisfying action.

The turning animation on both Die Anna and Max Damage can be choppy, but I somewhat can look pass that. That's the reason I'm not giving this game a five star rating. With no 3DFX enabled on DOS Box the game looks very ugly, btw. At least on my Dell laptop running Windows 11 with an i7 10th gen processor. I play it with the graphics maxed out. So just a heads-up. Once I opted to turn the level down the car graphics by one step and when the race started all the cars were completely white.

I can certainly see why this game was controversial for it's time, and I just love to revel in the cheesiness of it all. Carmageddon 1 is a great early vehicular combat game, feeling like a proto-Twisted Metal, although TW actually came out first. Carmageddon is more visceral though and a lot more mature, although lacking the weapons of TW. The combat itself has an arcade-y feel, plowing into cars and pedestrians while trying to keep your credits score up and the time counter constantly filled. Although I like how completing the race isn't necessary, the other option of hunting down every single pedestrian seems fun - buuut in practice becomes super tedious. The only realistic way to win a race is to destroy all your opponents. And honestly it controls a bit janky compared to later car combat titles but manages to keep you reeled in with brutal, campy violence and an awesome soundtrack. At it's heart Carmageddon is more focused on being a hectic destruction derby, and thats fine! The gameplay works, but it does kinda feel a bit lacking as a whole package by the end, with the only reason for replayability being unlocking new cars (though most of the other opponents' cars are kinda lame IMO). Still, its definitely an interesting title and practically a piece of gaming history, so def try it out.

Played this back when it was new in stores. Playing again now that GOG made it easily accessible on newer hardware. Still fun. Never found a game like it that gave me as much satisfaction crushing other cars or gibbing pedestrians. For some reason when starting the game I get a black screen after clicking past the intro movie, but a right-click makes the game menu appear.

Great and funny old classic car game