A few years back, at EGX Rezzed, I was lucky enough to sit down with a version of Carmageddon Max Damage as it was, then for XBox 360 and Steam. It would, I was promised by the developpers present, be ported to PS4 and XBox One eventually. As a bit of a fan of the Carmageddon series, I waited patiently. Roll forward two years to June 2016; and finally Carmageddon Max Damage has been released on the Next Gen consoles.
For those not in the know, Carmageddon (alongside Mortal Kombat) is renowned as being one of the games that birthed videogame age ratings. Set in a dystopian future, the player "races" around urban streets in brutal vehicles that wouldn't look at all out of place on the set of Mad Max. I use the word "races" lightly as, frankly, it's usually an easier and more spectacular win for players to brutalise their opponents and be the last car still moving, or to mow down pedestrians. Yes, this is that game, the one that got banned and censored in numerous countries due to wanton vehicular homicide.
The core of the game is still there. You pick your vehicle and race through dingy streets, obliterating any pedestrians who happen to be unfortunate enough to be anywhere near you (with special bonusses for cyclists, the elderly, and the disabled), ramming each other off the road and generally inflicting wanton carnage. Max Damage does mix things up a little, with different modes; VIP, where players compete to be the first to murder a particular pedestrian; Race, where players compete to be the first to complete three laps (but can 'steal' laps by destroying opponents cars); amongst others. Thing is, this is all gated behind a campaign system.
On booting into the game, your only option other than browsing the Settings, is to jump into the Campaign. The more of the Campaign you do, the more you unlock of the game. Fairly standard fare, but when all of the Free Play modes are hidden behind missions, and when any car/driver combo beyond Max Pain and Die Anna is locked behind a ridiculous 'theft' system, and it leaves the game feeling rather sparse and arduous.
So what of this 'theft' system? Well, on the loading screen for any particular mission, you'll be told which car can be stolen (and you'll have plenty of time to read it as the load times are fairly punishing). Then all it takes is for the player to destroy that car during the mission. All very well, until that particular vehicle is tearing ahead and actually focusing on winning the match, and if you want one of the other vehicles, you'll just have to wait for it's turn to be stealable.
On paper, the modes are great ideas, and there's plenty of customisation options for the vehicles (when you eventually work your way into the game far enough to unlock it all), so how does it all play?
Horribly. The vehicles steer like grand-pianos with only one wheel, and even light touches of the breaks bring them to either a complete stand-still, or sends them spinning off into the distance. For a race, this makes cornering a joke; try to steer, but plough into the wall and just use that to turn the car instead. In missions where accuracy is required, like mowing down peds, or aiming to ram a particular car, this makes it frustrating beyond belief. On some of the more cluttered maps, I found myself reversing and steering and ramming into walls for about twenty minutes trying to destroy the stealable car; at which point I put the controller down and wondered what I was doing with my life.
For the price of entry, I wasn't expecting much from Carmageddon Max Damage, perhaps a game that I could pick up with a few mates for half an hour, ram each other off the road and have a great laugh over a few beers. What I got was an unplayable mess that hides all the "Quick Fun" that the game is so renowned for, behind a ridiculous gating system, and brutal load times. There's no pick-up-and-play factor if I need to grind through five hours of arduous boredom in order to unlock enough vehicles and modes to make multiplayer interesting.
As for the graphics? Well, we knew it was going to be ported from the XBox 360, but the graphics are just ugly. There is no polish to them at all, just blocky, dull, pixelated textures in various browns and greys. I understand that the city is supposed to be a bleak future, but it's so lifeless, sparse and bland. It's blocky enough that it looks bad for an XBox 360 launch title, and on the PS4, that feels utterly unnacceptable - barrels are pixelated flat sprites that face the camera no matter which way you're coming from - that's corner cutting I've not seen since the 90s!