GAME REVIEW: Carmageddon: Max Damage – “Frustrating At Best, Unplayable At Worst”

Carmageddon, a decade spanning campaign of destruction, smutty puns and tongue-in-cheek humour, is finally back. I’ve played the past few games and I have to say, I was excited to fire up this newest incarnation and get smashing.

Firstly, and very satisfyingly, was the menu. Four choices, career, freemode, multiplayer then options. All so simple, and reminiscent of the previous titles’ functionality and flair, even being reminded through the initial loading screen of all the fun I had playing the older versions on PC and PlayStation.

I’m going to try and describe Carmageddon: Max Damage to newbies of the scene, the pedal to the metal smashathon that is Carmageddon. Just imagine, dear reader, if destruction derby had a three way with Need for Speed and an arcade machine, just after a nuclear apocalypse rocked the casbah to some post coital bliss. This offers just a tenth of the extremeness this unholy abomination truly does.

Its initial feel is that of the revamped 90’s game, down to menus, characters, cars and even the upgrade systems. It’s bare bones simple, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing in an age where a shinier game is usually considered a better game to a lot of people. Stainless Game’s unique approach has been liberally sprayed all over Max Damage from the soundtrack, to the hilarious pop-ups when you engage in some car-on-car ballet or mow down a cow in a rad suit.

My first few hundred rounds of Max Damage left me pretty confused, wanting more whilst wanting less, and suddenly dealing with the urge to become some Thunderdome-esque mechanic of evil genius proportions. The gameplay is unique in that there is rarely only one way to ‘win’ the round: some maps are split between finishing laps, destroying all meat bags or destroying all the other racers. This can be confusing, but once you realise the whole map’s there to be played with, it definitely adds some depth to what could have been a very simplistic game.

As I became more familiar with the basics, I started noticing upgrade coins scattered across levels,along with the opportunity to wreck a marked car and add it to my garage. This does add another level of fun, alongside finding aliens to run over, little easter egg areas and some seriously physics defying stunts.

Sadly, I can’t say it was all pedestrian blood and motor oil, as it does have, in my opinion, some pretty big flaws. The whole free roam ethos with the map is cool, but it seems the AI doesn’t have the get up and go to really challenge you, by they themselves winning events. They’ll fuck with you, ram you into walls, literally be stuck on you for minutes of painful, grinding and wiggling trying to break free to no avail, as the other AI is too busy dicking around to finish gathering checkpoints or smashing other non-playable characters.

I’ve got to say, I really did enjoy the soundtrack. It’s a number of genres thrown together to inspire adrenaline-fueled mad scientist style laughter as you mow down your enemies, be they car, cow or scientist. Combined with the whacky sound effects and puns by the minute, Max Damage offers another unique approach to something in a lot of games feels to be just shoe horned in.

The maps, while telling you to go explore, don’t give any incentive other than, ‘oh, I’ve been shoved here, let’s take a look’, and you can also get lost and distracted quite easily with very few screen prompts (i.e turn around, wrong checkpoint). All of these things are minor, and any die-hard arcade fan knows there’s always going to be small, niggling problems that become part of a game’s charm and the love you have for it. This next problem is not one of these aforementioned problems. In ode to Max Damage, the larger than life smash and crash derby, my real problems with this game could only be compared to Hiroshima, that all encompassing, single cell destroying, purging nuclear fire of the gods.

The controls. Honestly, the controls are incredibly frustrating and seemingly either not responsive enough or far too twitchy as they offer little to no finesse when trying to take any corners or joust and smash another racer. You spend a lot of time spinning out, crashing and just generally screeching at your controller like it had just summoned Cthulhu, instead of taking an easy breaking turn. So whilst I wipe down my anger sweat and embrace the rational reviewer inside of me, it’d be unfair to not mention the graphics. Easily the best graphics of any reinCARnation so far, along with extra details like limbs blowing off of peds, flashing lights and lots of fancy deployable weapons/boosts.

All in all, it’s a fun game, something to waste a few idle minutes on and appreciate the work a small and (to me) local studio has put together,with its tongue-in-cheek humour and sheer balls to wall lunacy that anyone can enjoy, if only for a little while. It stays true to its arcade-y roots and that’s always good, with a heavy dashing of Stainless’s typical devil may car(e) attitude towards those offended easily, mostly the boring folks. I do have to end this on a low note, as sadly the biggest and only real flaw was the control mechanics. I would honestly add this to my full time game roster, as it’s mindless enough that you don’t need a walkthrough and eight different saves and enjoyable enough to take up my free time, but until the controls are even marginally usable, it’s going to sadly be sat on my shelf gathering virtual dust.

All in all, I’ve got to say, I’m impressed with the progress Stainless and Carmageddon have made. Its just as funny as ever, offering the same high octane smash-a-thon as all previous versions. Even the graphics are newer, cleaner with great framerates.

Sadly, the controls, and some of the AI mechanics, make this game frustrating at best, unplayable at worst. This seriously detracted from my experience with Max Damage and I have a sneaking suspicion others will feel the same. If you’re a dedicated car killer the £30 price tag might not seem so steep, but with the awful controls, repetitive gameplay and frustrating AI, some folks might just be best to give it a miss.

READ MORE: Stainless Games on Bringing Carmageddon Back