Carmageddon The Death Race 2000:

(Click HERE to visit the Official Carmageddon Website)

In the year 1997 there was a game that caused immense controversy for its violence and bad nature: Carmageddon. It was hyped as the most violent PC game ever made, allowing the player to run over human pedestrians and see their guts hanging out of their split-open stomachs. It was received by the BBFC with anything but open arms; and they did anything they could possibly do to prevent  it being released. It got released eventually, and the humans came in the form of zombies with green blood, and it carried an 18 certificate. Unsurprisingly, a patch was later released which turned these zombies into humans and turned the slime into red blood . 

The sequel, Carmageddon 2 (released 1998) also received an 18 certificate and was released in the zombie form. And surprise surprise a human patch was also released for the sequel. Both games were very good racing games behind this violence, receiving many "Essential" and "Recommended" awards from PC magazines.

Three years from Carmageddon first hit the shelves, the third installment in the series is also in zombie form.

The game is stretched over nine distinct environments, each of which hold half a dozen races - all of which have to be completed (in the right order) to gain access to the next environment. This linearity can be frustrating because if you get stuck or bored the only option is to keep bashing away. This game, like its prequel, is mission based with objectives. The races alternate between six car races and three missions: kill the zombies, destroy all opponents or complete a set number of laps. There is a decent amount of variety in the missions, but too many involve simply fetching pick-ups from hard-to-reach places. You will often find yourself balancing along narrow tracks or leaping from rooftop to rooftop chasing an absurdly fiddly objective, all under an uncomfortably tight time limit.

   The circuit races tend to be more fun, as there's some opportunity top explore the environments and use the wide variety of pick-ups on offer. Most of these will be familiar to players of the two previous Carmageddon games. Each of the levels are quite large, with plenty of alternative routes. This size means that you'll run out of time if you mess around having fun. These time-limits are strict and make the racing tense; more time can be added by running down zombies or animals, or by destroying your opponents cars too. The time-bonuses, however, tend to be too stingy (and opponents are too hard to kill) to make these viable ways of completing a race. Destroying another racer, though, gives you opportunity to buy their car when you finish the race. Credits can also be spent on souping up your motor in three areas; power armour and offensives - there are thirty of these to fill up. 

Graphics:

There are many supported resolutions from a lowly 320x200 up to the pin-point sharp 1600x1200. This game also supports transform & lighting (t & l), a feature implemented by all of the latest NVidia graphic cards. It allows for scenes and pictures to look far more life like because these cards harness their own GPU (graphics processing unit). This eliminates the need for a high spec computer because this GPU carries out all the stress of graphics processing itself. Scenes are bright, colourful and detailed.

Conclusion:

This is a tired formula which mars a decent racing game. Running over people is simply not that funny anymore, and for this reason this game gets:

6

out of 10