Carmageddon may have been sadistically violent but there was still a solid game under the blood stained exterior. This was mainly due to the way that races could be won in a number of ways – either by coming first, destroying the opposition or killing all the pedestrians (infamously turned into zombies for the console versions). Alas, there are no pedestrians or zombies here – just robots aimlessly walking around, randomly firing laser pistols. They don’t even say “I was in the war!†when you run them over. Boo!
There are six play modes in the full game, including 8 player online battles, with the demo offering two – an arena based deathmatch and a variant of tag called Hounded. It’s all suitably hectic, with ramps and speed boost pads dotted around and on some levels huge Sluggers, enemies easily three times the size of your vehicle, appear. The fact that weapons quickly run out of ammo is a bit annoying, and we can’t say that we’re fond of the garishly bright neon colours either. If you enjoyed Play It’s Motorsiege or think that a sanitised Twisted Metal sounds like your thing then give it a go, but don’t expect anything deep or tactical – you spend most of the game with one finger on the accelerator and another on the fire button.
The demo is available now weighing in at 44 MB, while the full game can be purchased for 800 points. We reckon you’d be better off with the delightful Assault Heroes though.