Tag: driving

Carmageddon Max Damage

a rage quit review

Carmageddon is FBT’s Spirit Animal. The reboot puts it down.

In the late nineties, there was a new breed of unapologetic video games; they didn’t signal the end times as the media and parents feared, they did something better – agitated the bland gaming landscape and forced it to grow up, get good. And now, yet again, the game industry has become corporate, cautious, careful. While most games from that original era sold out or burnt out, we have the return of the baddest of them all – the first game to be banned by the BBFC, the game that sent the Daily Mail into meltdown, the game that let you run over pedestrians – Carmageddon. When Carmageddon Regeneration was announced I was more than a little excited. Time to kick modern gaming in the cunning stunt.

I was more than a little disappointed when C:R was released. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it but it was … meh. How could Carma be meh? Everything was there yet my beloved free-roaming, ped-killing, opponent-exploding Die Anna had become … inoffensive. I got bored. Bored! The power-ups were cartoony, the level design dull, the cars lacked that oomph, even the peds seemed indifferent to being run over. The original was Never Mind the Bollocks, this was Flogging a Dead Horse. I didn’t Rage Quit, I just got fed up and never went back. Until I saw Carmageddon Max Damage. A second chance. I was buying this.

Yes, I was stupid enough to buy the Carma Reboot twice. Max Damage is the premium version of Kickstarter’s Regeneration. Damnit. Is this karma for liking what the Daily Mail called a ‘sick death game’? Let’s see if Max Damage hits the spot.

The cars are all there, and the first track is the original’s Maim Street. Get in. I chose my beloved Die Anna, rev the Hawk and aim for the flag-waving guy. As I sail over the first hill, ready to become death … it feels a bit pointless. I’m having an existential crisis. Was the Daily Mail right? Have I become so desensitised that I’m unmoved when I run over a cheerleader? Have the past 20 years of ultra-violence been a gaming form of Ludovico? I look for Anna’s grinning face. Having a compatriot to all this mayhem will bring me back – no in-game Anna? Whoa. I hit the handbrake to swerve into the Peds. The car comes to a slow stop like I just performed an emergency brake in my driving test. The Peds all saunter off. Okay. Time for extreme measures.

I find the stadium and the electro-bastard ray is where I left it; but taking out the NFL teams and the crowds isn’t doing it either so I decide to get into it with the other cars to see if that livens things up, but it takes an age to find them let alone get into a fight, and I don’t get that screaming, out of control feel as I pootle along – you used to build up insane speed, bounce, careen, flip out of the map, land on a passing grandad or take out an opponent by accident; it was raucous, unruly, exhilarating, and Die Anna would woo-hoo along with you. Now neither of us are.

It’s a very empty game and nothing much happens by accident, but the problem is the original Carma’s attitude has become part of free-roam driving the same way Doom’s once dizzying action and grisly violence are embedded in modern FPS. Saint’s Row already aces this. It’s not dated, it’s just not necessary. But it’s not just an age thing. It’s also a not-very-good-thing.

The levels are boring to drive about in – they’re fun-looking, like the Area51 or the reworked classic levels, but miss that gritty, grimy feel; they’re much bigger and expansive than the original but that makes them less intense, unfocused. You don’t have those death-runs, those games of chicken. They’re also cluttered and uneven, causing the car to bounce around and that’s when it really starts to grate.

The Eagle and Hawk always felt like they wanted to get away from you in the original, and they were sturdy enough to let them. But now, with their wafer-thin build, they handle like they’re filled with helium. There’s no torque or grip, no sense of weight; how did a game released in 1997 better realise banger cars than the remake 20yrs later? You’re forever missing targets and sticking the corners, never just taking off. Getting a powerup requires a careful three-point-turn. Suddenly I’m being … careful. Still, we’ve still peds to kill. Well, no, because the cars have the turning circle of an oil tanker and alongside the ‘careful now’ handbrake you can’t lob the car about and catch peds on the fly – it’s rare see grandad fly off the bonnet in C:MD. On top of that, and this is a real Rage Quit moment …. it’s not about running people over anymore. Yes, a Carma game that’s not all about running people over. Did the Daily Mail develop this?

To have any real chance of progressing you have to play challenge missions; reach a ped or location first, destroy the most cars – basically all the stuff that requires precision driving and responsive cars. Great. All that happens is an opponent, who is a precision driver in a responsive car, reaches the goal first and the new target is halfway across a map that isn’t much fun to drive across and you’ll get beaten to anyway. FFS. What else?

In the original, you got money in-game and the time you finished with was converted into more to spend on car improvements. Now it’s transformed into XP which unlocks the levels, while upgrades are purchased with coins hidden in the game. Coins?! I’m Die Anna not Mario. I’m on a treasure hunt?! Plus, in the original, unlocked improvements could be attached to any car you stole. Coins upgrade cars individually now, which is a waste because most of the opponent’s cars handle worse than the Eagle. That it, can I quit now?

Thanks to the crappy cars and uneven levels, when you do get a Power-Up it’s over before you’ve had a chance at some fun, and the actionable powerups are no better. Because Anna is seemingly in a neck-support (understandable) you can’t aim them, only fire from the bonnet of your impossible to manoeuvre car. Why can’t I free-look/aim!? And the reward bonuses are thin on the ground, as if the game’s less aware of your actions; ‘Nice Shot, Sir!’ is a rarity no matter what you send flying into Peds, while ‘milk it’ pops up every time I hit a cow and ‘recycled!’ gets yelled when I knock a ped off a bike. I get it. And “wrecked’em” wasn’t funny the first time, let alone on every opponent kill, in every level, every time.

That’s it, I can’t take anymore. They got running over people wrong? They had two goes at this! Modern gaming can relax, this isn’t going to shake things up like the original did, even when you have the option to run over a man in a wheelchair – outrageous! Nope. Maybe in 1997 but now its desperate. I’ve done worse in better games that didn’t depend on outrage to be relevant. I would consider myself immature, juvenile, a man-child at a push but this just doesn’t work anymore as a concept, and as a driver game it’s pretty poor; the original still works because it’s a better game and because I remember when it was wrong. I love a throwback, a retro, a return, but if you’re going to return, have something to say. Something other than “I was in the war!” and think that’s still funny. It’s not Rage Quit, it’s Age Quit.

2015 Regeneration | 2016 Max Damage

Developer / Publisher Stainless Games

Platforms; Win (Steam/GOG)

Trials of the Blood Dragon

TheMorty gets distracted and ditches the sandbox for the saddle in Ubisoft’s full-throttle follow-up to FarCry: Blood Dragon.

“Blood Dragon… how the hell you not finished that yet tho!?” Having a chat with FBT about his latest FarCry review spawned an interesting question, as such a massive FarCry fan how had I not yet played the most fun and iconic game in the series?

The reason I never made it thought the Far Cry 3 DLC is a lengthy one. See, I did actually purchase and start playing it in 2014 on the Xbox 360 and I loved the first 50% of the game. It was fresh, funny and a light relief from the otherwise engrossing nature of the series. The problem came halfway through the playthrough when I received a knock at the door from Mr. Amazon Delivery Man who brought my shiny new Xbox One. Enamoured with my next gen purchase and the prospect of playing Titanfall and Forza 5, the battered old 360 went back in the box, never to be picked up again. Boxed with it, was my 50% complete save game for Blood Dragon.

Two years passed before Xbox released the DLC as a backwards compatible purchase, but by that point I’d already ventured through the Himalayas as Ajay Ghale and speared Sabre-tooth Tigers in Primal. It’s safe to say, I’d probably missed the boat. That said, when FBT gave me the latest in his long line of kick’s up the behind for not playing and finishing one of his top 50 titles, I felt the need to revisit. In I went to the store; Search: Blood Dragon. Returned: Two matches. One of those matches is the aforementioned sandbox title, but the second return was somewhat more appealing; A ‘Trials’ spin-off covered in glorious 80s neon.

I’m not much of a petrolhead, but I’ve always had a soft-spot for racing games, particularly those on two wheels. It stretches back to my very first console in the 90s and my in-the-box, single cartridge triple of ‘Mega Games II’ on the Sega Mega Drive. Alongside Columns and top down footy game Italia ’90, was a timed checkpoint arcade style racer game called ‘Super Hang On’. It wasn’t the easiest game for an 8-year-old kid – as you had to brake more than accelerate, but it was great fun and many a night I defied bedtime to try and pass that elusive finish line on the Expert European Stage.

I’d played previous games in the Trials series before, but they’d never really set the world alight. True to the ‘Kickstart’ nature of Trial biking, they’d always been a left-to-right platformer and while that was a decent yarn if you had a spare 20 minutes, you’d soon get bored with the lack of inventiveness. However, the same couldn’t be said for Trials of the Blood Dragon, this was something new entirely…

The game starts with the to-be-expected, classic tutorial level “Enter the Blood Dragon” (80s reference 1 of 167,893,640). Another tutorial, big whoop… Actually, yeah big whoop… It’s a level narrated by Mark IV Designated Cybercommando Rex ‘Power’ Colt, the protagonist from Far Cry! What’s not to love!? While I’m back-flipping my way to the finish line, over various hills, obstacles and huts, there’s some interesting insights in the narration that sets out to bind the two games together. The setting is quite some years after the ending of the Far Cry DLC and Rex is long gone. As Rex tells you, it’s not him on the bike – you’re playing as his Son. One of two twin-siblings, Slayter and Roxanne, that you get to control in the various assignments you’re about to undertake.

There’s the familiar comic-book cut-scene we’ve become accustomed to in the first Blood Dragon game but instead of that Shinobi meets Metal Gear Solid look, it’s drawn with a more limited palette. Re-using the same pink, yellows and reds as if it’s been animated in the style of Teen Titans Go!

The first quartet of missions are in the familiar surroundings of a futuristic Vietnam. Rather than going prone crawling through the jungle, your goal is less stealth and more speed as we’re tasked with getting from one side of the map to the other within an achievable time limit –attempting not to frequently stack it en route. Trust me, that is a lot easier said than I can assure you is done. At first the narration is great, but after your 8th or 9th track restart it gets tedious

“My name is Rex…” STACK.

“My name is Rex Power Colt” STACK.

“My name is Rex Power. I’m a Cybercommando… my mission is to protect and serve the United States of America… for the past decade, I’ve…” STACK

Oh, for fu…

What I do love about stacking though is the taunts. The message that comes across screen as you die is a passive aggressive statement designed to infuriate you as much as it’s supposed to spur you on.

The gameplay itself stays true to the nature of trial biking. Your incentive is time and accuracy, the ‘Kickstart’ attitude and ethos. A well-timed brake gets you further ahead than gunning it and a tactical acceleration when landing can be like a mushroom boost in Mario Kart. There’s no extra points for BMX style flips and you’re not rewarded for pulling a trick like you would in ‘Matt Hoffman’s Pro BMX’ (the Tony Hawk of bike games). That said, it isn’t half fun attempting them.

It’s clear by this point in the game that Ubisoft’s are hoping to piggyback off the success of the popular FarCry DLC in order to boost another of its dying franchises – a trick all too familiar if you’ve followed their collaboration with Square Enix over the Assassins Creed/Final Fantasy XV DLC, just as the “remastered” AC games made their timely way to the current crop of consoles.

In-jokes about the 80s and Blood Dragon aside, by the second full mission it’s starting to get a little monotonous. Biking, not racing, doesn’t always have a good replay value and as a single-player game, the story is starting to wear thin. This is where the game is forced to mix it up. Roxanne gets off her bike half way through the trial run and we move into a 2D platformer, reminiscent of Assassins Creed Chronicles. As we navigate the classic traps and pitfalls of electric floors, bottomless pits and neon Lava, we make our way up to the control room and hit the switch before the time runs out. It gives it a bit of a different dimension and stops it from becoming plain.

The game progresses in this way and there’s additional levels where you play an RC, a tank and even float around space wearing a jet pack. By level 3 you can fire a gun from your bike and later in the game even unlock a grappling-hook, where you can swing across the roof from one track to another – Batman-style. Something pretty fun when you’re darting through the rickety old mines on a clapped-out cart.

The game re-invents itself level-to-level and you’re never sure what to expect. While some of the tedium remains, the repetitive nature becomes a lot more palatable the more you progress. It gives itself a welcome break from the norm and the story itself provides a driver and a purpose to keep playing, something other time-trial based games fail to do.

The main issue with the game was its value for money. Unless you’re going for a 100% record on every track and aiming to get an A+ filled report card, you can beat the game in around 2-3 hours. Not great worth for a £15 purchase.

Arguably my biggest annoyance is the lack of Blood Dragons. I remember from my pathetic attempt at playing the original I was terrified when one stalked you into a camp and you spent most of your time hiding and trying to tactically take it down without being spotted. In this game, the Dragons are few and far between and when you do see one, it’s in the background or helping you out by wiping out the obstacles in your path – hardly living up to the game’s title.

There are unlockable levels and collectable items in the form of stickers. Each carrying a vague, obscure and well before my time reference that I’m sure the older generation would love, but the game doesn’t really give you the opportunity to have a field day picking them apart. Figuring out where the developers were nodding might be a little giggle, but it still wasn’t enough to make me want to ace every level just to find them, by level 18 I was ready to just get from start to finish and move on to the next track.

The game’s biggest problem is it sits between two incompatible genres, it’s not quite good enough for motorbike-gaming enthusiasts and it’s nowhere near good enough as an action platformer. There’s no multiplayer and there isn’t a map creator/editor as you’d expect in other games in the trials or Motocross series – another thing which equally limits it’s replay value. There’s no character or vehicle customisation, what you see is what you get with this mid-market arcade game.

The pulsating soundtrack is good for the missions, but it’s not something you’d listen to on the daily commute to work. I’d argue the only way you’ll get something out of this game is if you’re an 80s Easter Egg hunter or if you’re a massive fan of Blood Dragon and are desperate to follow on Max’s story.

It’s a Far Cry from the original, but it’s a good effort and if you can pick it up for a fiver, it’s a decent way to kill a few hours. Go in with minimal expectations and you’ll probably find this is your cup of tea, but to me it just feels like a forced mess that bastardises two fantastic franchises into a soggy mess.

2016 | Developer; RedLynx | Publisher; Ubisoft

Platforms Win, PS4, X0

Test Drive Unlimited

a second wind review

FBT lives the driving-sim dream

I avoid dedicated Driving games – I’m a strictly Carmageddon, Driver, Saints Row and GTA driver; games where I can go off road and over pedestrians. I can’t stand track-games, winning by going round in circles. I want my car to be a weapon. And I really can’t stand the idea of Driving Sims; why would I digitally behave? TDU seemed like GTA without the GT. But I’ve come to accept I’ll never own a Bugatti Veyron, so the closest I’ll get is a game like TDU, putting me behind a wheel I’ll never afford.

Doesn’t even look like I’ll get to drive a digital Veyron. TDU is, or was, bolted to Gamespy and once that went, so did the servers and ability to connect. Although TDU can play offline, it was very insistent about being logged into Gamespy – encouraging me with the warning “you won’t be able to finish the game completely”. Well that sucks. Luckily, I can skip by assuring TDU I’ll never be good enough to reach the end anyway.

We open with a nice little scene-setter – picking my character from a passport line, I’m flown to Hawaii to rent a low-end car then purchase a house. No reason, no backstory, no further plotting. We literally have $ to spend and time to fill. With what I have left I pick my first car (should not have bought the most expensive house) – a dinky Golf R32. If I squint it kinda looks like a Veyron.

Although the map is open, I can only trigger missions/races by discovering them. It’s kinda like a car-based Skyrim. I put my foot down and … nothing. Turns out I have to turn the key with a separate button, something that will constantly infuriate me as I get into it. The first icon I discover is a Ben Sherman shop – at first I assumed product placement but I can actually visit and buy clothes. I’m not racing for Ben Sherman shirts. I consider rage quitting but you can’t really rage quit in a Golf, and once I zoom into the map I realise there is a lot to do here; challenges, races, missions, plus dozens of very posh looking houses and what seems like hundreds of cars. Everything way out of my price range. I have a purpose. This really is feeling like an RPG but instead of bringing peace or justice to the land I’m buying it up like some tax-dodging absent landlord who gets his Veyron towed and just buys another one. There’s also clubhouses where you can hang with other drivers, buy and sell cars, and the island itself acts much like an online world with other drivers logging in. Except not anymore. It’s just me and the AI.

The main issue with TDU is your fellow drivers. They’re not dangerous but they are stupid. They will indicate, which is helpful, but often make last minute lane changes, break suddenly or just pull over. It’s fraught. Although your cars can’t be damaged, the worry is a bump slows you down and every millisecond counts; winning means $ and when granny decides to change lanes it’s the difference between affording a Cadillac and a Veyron. I can’t be sure if they’re reacting to me, other drivers or just doing random stuff, but it can be frustrating. The game also cheats to keep up with you so once you have a speedy little number you’ll suddenly spot some titchy little car scream across the intersection to catch up, making it hard to anticipate. But you can anticipate the cops blaming you for it.

Although the cops don’t seem concerned with speed – I’ve passed them at 400kph before (Not in my Golf, mind) and never gotten a flash but if I clip an AI’s wing mirror they’re on me like it’s GTA5. And they’re tenacious. You’ll hear the call go over the radio then have to avoid them until the heat dies down. The more mayhem you cause (Or the AI Cars cause for you) the worse it gets until they’re throwing up roadblocks and cornering you. It’s not like Driver where it turns into Car Wars, if you keep out of sight long enough they’ll give up, but every time they spot you it’s reset and a lot of the roads don’t have many options. Going off road pauses the meter so the second rubber touches asphalt again they’re on you. And getting pulled over means a hefty fine. It’ll take two or three races to make that back.

Money is as free-flowing as the game is free-roam. Most races will net you from $1,000 up to and beyond $100,000 – soon you’re buying up the most insane houses and filling the garages with cars and bikes and it becomes more than just race, race, race. Well it is purely racing, but if you get your head into an RPG state of mind, TDU is something special. It’s not just a driving sim, it’s a lifestyle sim. I am a Rockstar sauntering out, staring at my motors and deciding which to take for a spin and see where the day takes me. I didn’t expect it but there’s something incredibly cool about swaggering into a dealership, your wallet flush, and buying your first hyper-car. When the cut scene plays of you driving it out, it’s as cool as leveling up or upgrading a weapon – you smirk and can’t wait to take it out for a spin.

The ‘quests’ are usually pretty cool, stuff like “160mph in heavy traffic” or go quick enough to set off speed cameras. You can pick up rich wives (well, ‘Models’), assuming you have a cool enough car and they’ll give you their unused Groupons for clothing stores if you didn’t ruffle their hair. It’s a bit of a low prize, especially considering how rough some of them are. The routes, not the wives. Hitchhikers don’t care what jalopy you’re in but like the Model Wives, too much jostling and they’ll bail. I’ll never get that Ben Sherman shirt at this rate. Courier missions are a bit more GTA-like; while the package doesn’t care about being lobbed about, you will care about the cops on your tail and the tight time limit. There’s also missions where you rock up to some rich dude’s house and drive his car to his other house. Those are high-earners, but they come at a high cost; if you chip his car your earnings will take a beating. So go easy, obey the Highway Code and all is well, right? Wrong, because there’s a car out there all TDU drivers fear … The Ghost Car.

Endless amounts of time I smack into a car that isn’t there. It triggers police interest, costs me valuable credits, ruins my speed laps, has cost me 1st. It’s costing me a Veyron. You’ll have no inkling, just a sudden cloud of smoke, sparks and police sirens. They don’t even appear afterwards, a victim of slow-ass Draw Distance. They’re just not rendered, only the collision. You’re concentrating on passing one car only to hit one you didn’t even know was there – they’re like Velociraptors. I had a perfectly good Sunday afternoon bike ride ruined by a ghost car. Wound up costing me nearly $100,000 in fines by the time the police had caught me – and how did they catch me? I ran into another invisible car.

‘Side-quests’ aside, the races and high-performance challenges are where the big money is, and in order to do them you step up in classes; designated by the cars you buy. The higher the class, the classier the car required. While the physics and handling are very 2006, the cars do all differ, and it’s also about getting to know the island. Like an RPG, know what you’re driving into, start getting tactical with your car choices. Then you’ll start earning. It’s so much fun getting enough money to rev out of the showroom with something as beautiful as a … well, they’re all beautiful.

The Ferrari Enzo, Pagani Zonda, Koenigsegg, the Vanquish; they’re eye-watering. The Maserati MC12 might look like art incarnate, but it handles like it’s on ice. Still, look at it. But for me, it was the Saleen S7 Twin-Turbo. That thing GOES. I passed 430kph before losing it. It was exhilarating being in the driving seat. You can change views, from behind to driver’s seat to basically sitting on the bonnet and they all provide a different experience. But if you want to just to pootle around town, I recommend the McLaren F1 GTR, a snip at $1.5 mil. Sounds like the devil’s having a coughing fit when you floor it. It’s no Veyron, but damn.

But it’s not all hyper-cars – I’m not compensating for something. There’s classics in here. Maserati 3500 GT, Lambo Miura, E-Type Jag and the Aston Zagato. When you get in one of those you feel like 60’s-era Michael Caine, James Bond, The Saint (hang on, he drove a Volvo) – you get a real sense of accomplishment, excitement – when you drive those cars into your eight-garage house with an infinity pool, you’ve arrived. You earnt this. Stroke the dash, rev the engine, peal out of the driveway, and smash into a Ghost Car.

Muscle cars are taken care of too; Camaro, Mustang, Firebird, the Ford GT and the Shelby GT. Plus there’s concept cars, AC, TVR, some oddities and the low-end starter cars which shouldn’t be ignored. Who am I kidding, they’re totally ignored but you’ll buy them anyway because you’re so freaking rich.

Once you’re in the top-class cars, the games really step up. It’s cool to come across a race for just Ferrari’s, like an exclusive little club. Best thing though, it goes by make not model, so get yourself the best of the bunch, then pile it over to a garage and get it pimped. My fave was finding a race for Alpha Romeros and rocking up in my Competizione, unlocked only by completing the Tour of the Island challenge. It’s a zippy little filly but luxurious too. I feel like I should be wearing driving gloves and a flat-cap playing this game.

There’s bikes too, which for the most part just show how basic the physics are. Ranging from Triumphs to Ducatis, riding them does call to mind GTA VC-style cornering and steering. As in, they don’t do either. But I bought them all anyway because I look fabulous in leathers.

Some of the cars have hidden qualities, especially if you upgrade them; a middling c-class is suddenly a dark horse that can trouble a Ferrari, but it’s here that the game struggles. Each house you buy has a number of garages, and while you can tour the garage of the home you’re in, you only get a text list of the others, which doesn’t compare cars at a glance. As such, that XJ220 that can ruin anything else in the B-class is constantly missed because you’re flicking back and forth trying to remember what it’s called or track all their stats – that’s one hell of a first world problem to have, too many houses and cars but it’s an annoyance when you know there’s the perfect car and you can’t find it.

Unlike it’s cars, TDU hasn’t aged that well, the ghost cars are a major frustration as is the bloody start button and the menu sucks, plus there’s the coupons – since you only see yourself lounging or getting into or out of cars it seems a bit redundant; I get that I have to look the part but do I need to scroll through 24 Ben Sherman shirts? To be honest, there’s nothing in TDU that we haven’t played in other racer games, and many have done it better. Without Ghost Cars. And now Gamespy is no more, TDU is unsupported; some cars are missing due to online activation and there’s no DLC to download anymore – But, by the near-end of it all I had amassed the kind of car and house collection only billionaires dream of.

Because you’re not battling a leader board or trying to win a season, losing doesn’t matter so much. Just go back to one of your ten garages and pick one of two dozen cars and try again. Some of the races and challenges are insanely hard/unfair, but as a sim, a genre I avoid, it’s brilliant. In real-time, I drove my Enzo on a Cannonball Run called the Millionaire’s Cup around Hawaii’s coasts, bringing it 1 minute 10 seconds under the one-hour limit. That meant something; I drove a Ferrari for nearly an hour straight and loved every minute. And netted $1Mill in the process. It’s awesome.

While I tried very hard to turn TDU into GTA, eventually I realised I was missing out on the sheer joy of just driving. I still drove like a loon, but there’s just something classy about TDU, taking the scenic route in a E-Type is pure wish fulfillment. It’s one of those laid-back games that doesn’t put pressure on you yet makes it very hard to leave.

Just one last tour of my garages, maybe a quick drive into the mountains with some Frank playing. Think I’ll take the …

Wait, there is no Bugatti Veyron. I bet that’s the Ghost Car …

2006 | Developer, Eden Games | Publisher, Atari Inc.

Platforms; Win | PS2 | X360

Carmageddon

A Blast from the Past review

FBT’s review of Carmageddon, the best racer of the 90s so he says – but he said that about Monster Truck Madness and Road Rage too so who knows.

The Past

I’d always disliked racer games. But Carma was different; originally envisioned by devs Stainless as a demolition derby, it shifted to sandbox when they pursued the Mad Max licence. People-mushing was added after they tried to licence Deathrace instead. Finally, they came up with their own world, ripped from 70s/80s dystopia movies; Rollerball meets Nascar, cars race through slums winning by crossing the finish or stopping anyone else from doing so; running over the ‘peds’ gained you more time to race. It was great. But what made it even greater was the free-roam element. My mates and I would chalk up a healthy amount of ped-death time then go looking for trouble. We would analyse the layout, work out if we could reach building tops, find hidden areas … We’d spend hours on a single level. Of course, you could attempt to win without running anyone over and that had its own challenges. The biggest of which was not giving in and handbrake-turning into a crowd of people.

The Daily Mail trembled with horror on it’s release and demanded Carma be banned, going so far as to claim the character Die Anna was a ‘sick’ reference to the people’s princess. That’s … okay I wouldn’t put it past Carma, except Princess Di died after its release, but don’t let that stop a headline. Building on the controversy, publishers SCi, decided to submit it to the BBFC … which hugely backfired. The BBFC weren’t exactly open-minded in the nineties and they banned it, supposedly because they enjoyed it so much that suggested people would emulate – what? Stainless released it with zombies instead, who spewed green blood. But what we knew, and the morally-panicked didn’t, was that new internet. From there, Stainless’ own mod quickly made its way to floppies and magazine disks, providing a way to turn the zombies human again. We were back in business. When not one child mowed anyone down in their Dad’s car, the protesters moved on to being dismayed at GTA instead.

In today’s moral-choice driven and heartfelt emotional gaming, there’s nothing out there that celebrates your pure homicidal side. Time to Die Anna again.

Still a Blast?

As I race along ‘Maim Street’, the first of thirty-odd races, memories come back and I take off, aiming for the stadium where I mow down NFL teams, then shoot down the road knocking peds for six, blood and body parts spinning. I mistime a corner and obliterate my car, then get rear-ended which causes me to shunt a mailbox that skids off and takes out a passing OAP and earns me a ‘good shot, sir’ bonus. Holy crap this is good. And not in that ‘I want to try this in the real-world’ way. Chasing after the peds is fun, they squeal and take off, yell and swear at you, while hitting the cows in the countryside levels, listening to their Moo turn into a Goo is always a giggle. Although there’s only four or five locations – inner city, coastal, a mine, countryside and industrial areas, each race opens up different or expanded areas, so the races always feel bigger rather than just longer or repetitive. Plus, it gives you another chance to get somewhere you couldn’t earlier. Completing a course gives you points, alongside the points you gain in-game to buy upgrades and unlock your position, which in turn unlocks the races. And more dangerous opponents…

As I crash around, I realise just how much genuine fun I’m having, how exhilarating, exciting and intense it all is. Yes, it’s blocky and dated but that soon disappears because you’re so into it. I miss this, most modern games don’t have this reckless abandon and most of it is my own doing rather than the game manipulating me into a scripted experience. As soon as I finish one level, I’m revving to get onto the next. Carma is just so exciting – that’s not the controversy talking; it’s a really good game. The physics and engine are amazing and the levels are laid out in a way that maximises freedom so you can really take control of the way you play; you quickly learn how much you can push it, anticipate its reactions and gauge when to turn, slide or break. I’d forgotten about Die Anna’s face in the corner, reacting to the mayhem as we went, the on-screen congrats as we made good kills, the noises the peds make, the way the levels are filled with things to trip you up or give you the chance to let loose. As the game progresses you get the opportunity to steal opponent’s cars once you’ve wasted them, and they each have their own feel and ability. There’s a caddy with a cattle-catcher, driven by ‘Otis P Jivefunk’ that makes short work of any head-on attacks but is like driving a bouncy castle, Vlad with his hotrod car which will impale yours and there’s OK Stimpson (renamed Juicy Jones in rereleases) who drives what looks a lot like a white-topped Ford Bronco … The opponents and their cars are all very different although their tactics are largely the same – ram you.

There’s not much in the way of in-car fighting and early on it’s a war of attrition as you just batter each other, but later you’re cutting through them like bloody butter; except for the big boys (and girls) like The Plow and Heinz Faust’s tank-car. They’re nightmares, but not as bad as the cops.

Cops do serious damage and constantly ram you, siren screaming, holding you in place while the timer ticks down. The only downer is the cops only go after me. It’s not until at least mid-way through and several armour, power and offensive upgrades that I can even think about taking them on. It’s a hugely gratifying moment when the car is tricked out and you grab the solid granite powerup then spy a copper in the distance. Revenge. Of course, there’s that damn super-cop car sitting on a roof in later levels. When that thing lands, it’s game over. Except it’s not. The great thing about Carma was you can’t die – your car can get disabled, but you just repair and live to maim again, giving you the freedom of just putting your foot down and seeing what happens. They removed this invincibility from the sequels and they suffered because of it; once you get nervous about accelerating in Carma, it’s not Carma anymore. I remember discovering this in Carma 2 and being so disappointed I sacked it off.

The only way to lose in Carma was to run out of time. So long as the timer is ticking, you’re okay. You gain time in three ways – passing checkpoints, battering opponents or running over peds. You can even win by killing all the peds, but even with a power-up that reveals their location it’s incredibly difficult to do. Other powerups include instant handbrake, good for anyone chasing you, damage magnifiers, and the insanely annoying Bouncy Bouncy. The big one is Pinball, which as the name suggests sends you – and everything else you touch – careening around the map. They’re huge maps too, Carma doesn’t scrimp on the experiences; so many areas to explore, so many opportunities to cause mayhem. I’m attempting to drive up the sides of buildings, ramming things to see what happens, taking huge chances and accelerating so hard Die Anna starts screaming. Skimming past opponents, setting up games of chicken (they never falter), grabbing powerups then rushing to use them before they run out, clobbering cop cars then taking off … Carma is basically like school playtime, when you realise the teacher’s about to herd you all in so you suddenly go mental trying to have all the fun at once before you’re forced back into class.

It’s amazing that Carma didn’t have more influence on race gaming. Series’ like Flatout, Midtown Madness and Road Rage shared the anarchic DNA of Carma but without the murder or black humour – Monster Truck Madness did have open world opportunities but you still had to hit checkpoints rather than the crowds to win. But I realise now Carma isn’t really about running people over, it was the racing without rules, and along with the swearing, cheeky level names, the ‘Pratcam’ and the on-screen congrats for outlandish kills, it all adds up to a game that’s dedicated to you finding your own fun. So few games let you have your own fun anymore, least of all the racing genre.

Even a decade after release the protesters never let it go; That bastion of family values Keith Vaz was still using Carmageddon in 2005 to prove a point about video game violence, stating in a commons debate that Carma’s ‘sounds of cracking bones adds to the realistic effect’ – did he ever play it? He also noted “Duke Nukem hones his skills by using pornographic posters of women for target practice and earns bonus points for shooting naked and bound prostitutes and strippers” – Really? There’s been so many re-releases of Duke that I must have missed the ‘moral outrage edition’. He also talked about Postal and even mentioned the ‘Postal Dude’ – A politician using the word Dude in the Houses of Parliament? Games rock. Yet Vaz, The Daily Mail and pressure groups like Mediawatch seem to miss their own point when they panic hysterically about video games; twenty years on and still no one’s ran anyone over because Carma told them too. Carma was rebooted in 2015 and the Daily Mail was there for it, reporting that “ultra-controversial video-game Carmageddon might be unleashed on another generation of teenagers” as if the terror alert should be raised to severe after the original nearly brought society to its knees via rampaging teenagers with learner plates, before screaming about the original being banned (But not ‘unbanned’). Let it go.

Like Doom, the thing about Carma wasn’t the violence, it was the perfect experience – it wasn’t real, anyone except Daily Mail readers could tell the difference, but I could anticipate the car’s movements, how hard to push it, where it would end up – when I missed a ped I could yell the game was cheating but really, I’m just not that good a driver. There’s nothing ‘real’ about it, but it was a brilliant game and one that you could tell the devs had fun making and that shines through. It wants you to have a good time. It’s blocky and the sprites animate through two or three stills and you can’t really see what’s going on. But once we’re off, the gloves are off too and I’m barrelling down the road, bashing my fellow drivers and pulling handbrake turns into peds like I’m twenty years younger. Pixels don’t matter when a game’s this good. Carma is a brilliant game on every level – to play and to offend. The sequels weren’t as good and that includes the 2015 reboot which veered into arcade silliness and lost the original’s black humour in favour of smut, but the original still plays great and it’s even available on iOS/Android. There’s no excuse. Play it, just to annoy the Daily Mail.

Die Anna, the gamer’s princess.

Developer Stainless Games | Publisher Sci / Interplay Productions

Platforms; Win | iOS/Android

Rage

A SECOND WIND REVIEW

Do not go gentle into that good night, old age should burn and rave at close of day. Rage, rage against the dying of the id.

All id have ever been known for is FPS. They set the standard with one game, Doom. Then carried on remaking it for the next 20 years before being bought by Bethesda. It’s almost a final act of rebellion that their last game as an indie would, instead of being a FPS be an RPG, a genre they’ve never even tackled before. Could they do for RPG what Doom did for FPS? That would be a suitably apocalyptic ending for the original rebel indie.

id’s apocalypse starts with an asteroid hitting Earth and unfortunately the only thing to survive was a copy of Fallout 3. Meanwhile, the army, scientists, thinkers, id’s originality, were placed in underground Vaults – sorry, Arks to escape the destruction. After his cryo-freeze malfunctions, Rageguy is thawed out and, sunlight blinding us like an iconic vault exit moment, we see what became of the world. It’s a wasteland, where we meet a wastelander (from Rage’s wasteland, not Fallout 3’s The Wasteland, just to be clear), one of the descendants of those who survived the impact on the surface. He takes us back to Megaton – I mean, a settlement, where quests to recover inconsequential things heavily guarded by raiders await.

You can argue there’s only one way a post-apocalyptic world was going to end up and Rage is reflecting the same outcome explored in Fallout, but I don’t buy that. The ruined buildings, sun-scorched look, raiders vs settlers, the feel of it; Rage copied Fallout 3’s homework as lazily as a Bethesda DLC and filled in the blanks with Mad Max. id were famous for never bothering to set the scene, the storyline was barely a line in the manual but this time we don’t need a manual because we’ve been here before. Couldn’t they have done something different, set it immediately after the impact as everything collapses, or make out society didn’t recover and just have it as Rageguy alone, or changed it environmentally, make out the asteroid caused a flood – us picking our way around the ruins with water and nasties swimming about; that would have been a different take, had folks zipping about on Airboats? Instead we’re pootling about in Dune Buggies and thinking about how good Fallout 3 was. And once we’re over the Fallout 3 feel, we realise Rage is a po-faced Borderlands.

Borderlands opens with you helping an outpost against bandits. Rage opens with you helping an outpost against bandits. Both feature a knowledgeable local who needs menial jobs doing which end with getting a gate open to reach a bigger town where the plot is. It’s beat for beat the first act of Borderlands before falling back into Fallout 3 with ‘The Authority’ standing in for Fallout 3’s Enclave. There is a major difference between Rage and Fallout 3/Borderlands though; Rage has no plot. There’s the id I remember.

At least, no personal plot. Rageguy wakes up mute and stays mute. He’s just been thawed then a gun thrust in his hands and he’s pointed at the nearest raiders?! Lucky he turned out to be a marine not a scientist then. Or id’s originality. He’s not hungry, thirsty, confused, curious – doesn’t even need the loo. Rage could have distinguished itself by having an RPG hero that speaks for once, reacts; Rageguy has less context than either Fallout 3 or Borderlands’ protagonists and yet he isn’t even slightly flabbergasted by the state of the world. There’s stoic and then there’s vacant; it’s only okay to have a blank canvas if you get to impress your digital personality onto him, but it’s a strictly linear game with no choices or impacts – the only emotion Rage triggers is familiarity. That’s a hell of an assumption on id’s part; in Fallout you had a personal mission but you chose how you went about it; in Borderlands, missions were mutually advantageous. Rageguy has zero characterisation yet he’s silently happy to fix someone’s leaky pipes? Oh, that’s Fallout 3. Even Doomguy has a personal reason; the hellspawn killed his pet rabbit Daisy. When an RPG has less characterisation than Doom you’ve got problems.

The larger plot is Rageguy’s hunted by The Authority, a militaristic group that controls the wasteland, because he has something even smaller than the plot; nanites. Added to his blood before cryo-sleep, they now provide him with better reflexes and healing properties, including a mini-game that kicks in before dying; you can time an electric shock to give you a health boost and kill anything nearby; like Borderlands’ Second Wind. But then nothing else happens with the nanites. No levelling up, cool abilities, it’s just why The Authority is looking for him – not that he’s bothered. They’re literally the plot. And wouldn’t Rageguy want to join The Authority? It’s the military and he’s a Marine so his natural response would be to re-up. In the game he’s shown no emotional attachment to the little folks so why is he against joining the more advanced Authority? Not that he’d get the chance, The Authority isn’t looking very hard and you never bump into them. Because there’s no freedom to bump.

In Fallout the biggest risk in heading to a location wasn’t what’s inside, it was the hundreds of distractions along the way. In Borderlands it was the constant threat and the lure of top loot in that clearly dangerous camp over there. And in both cases there was open terrain to cut across. But in Rage, Open is an alleyway. You drive linear paths, cliffs on either side, nowhere to go but where you’re going. There’s nothing out there. I was kinda hoping for a GTA Apocalypse with prime id attitude. Instead we’ve got a game where two-thirds of it has nothing to do. There’s loads to do the garage though; spikes, machine guns, rockets, upgrades – you pimp the hell out of your dune buggy then … just Uber from location to location. You meet raiders of course, but they’re just an annoyance you drive through. It is the most boring driving game I have ever played, but you can enter races.

Why am I entering races? Because Rageguy has nothing else to do. Just race his buggy around tracks that have floating power-ups. WHY THE HELL ARE THOSE HERE?! Is this game serious or just a knock about? You couldn’t make racing more interesting than Mario Kart with a Borderlands reskin? Do we get a banana skin powerup? Racing isn’t even tied into a larger plot, you just keep going round and round to generate tokens to upgrade your buggy and get across the map quicker. One of the upgrades is id decals for your car, then crash and burn it.

Once you’ve reached your marker, what happens when you get there? It’s not bad actually. If there’s one thing id do well, its shooting people. The shootouts can be intense and disorientating, and the locations tend to be close-quarters with them coming at you from everywhere. The various clans that you tangle with are straight out of … oh you get the idea. Bandits, nutjobs, mutations. They move-in fast, using exciting scripted leaps and bounds but while I’m a fan of tough baddies, those guys are playing on Nightmare mode. Even without armour they can shrug off two head shots or take a grenade and keep coming. id seemed to misinterpret Borderlands low-survivability rate and figured just make them really tough. Borderlands was more subtle than that plus you had room to move and a special skill to even the odds. They even crack-wise like Borderlands goons; id aping another shooter?

Missions cheat you as well. You can clear out an area then get sent back to find it full again. Borderlands repopulated places, but you weren’t sent into the same small, closed off arena time after time. id couldn’t see their way to creating more than a few locations? Eventually we reach a bigger town, tangle with The Authority and throw in with a rebel group, although we’re not entirely sure why or what the TA are up to, but no one involved cares. Worse, the franchise-starting ending implies this is just the beginning so it doesn’t even end, just stop.

Rage, of course, looks amazing. And it’s a solid, well produced game – but we’ve played it before. The question is, where? What is Rage? It’s not a full RPG or even a minimalist RPG; 2015’s Mad Max got that approach right by having a compelling lead who had a reason to travel light, to stay mobile. And he talked so we knew why we were -or weren’t- doing things. It’s not a Role Playing Shooter because you don’t even get to loot (One thing you can loot is a Pipboy Bobblehead … and that just makes Rage feel insecure) – the only looting here is id digging around in Fallout 3 and Borderlands; you can’t even pick up Raider weapons. Who doesn’t arm themselves, makes do with the same loadout until given a weapon? Wait a minute – No looting, no characterisation, silent hero, threadbare story, standard weapon loadout and no Role Playing? That means Rage is … a Doom Clone. Like every other id game. I should have known. It’s hardly worth a mention in the wasteland survival guide.

This is id’s final game as an indie and I have mixed feelings about that; in taking on RPG, a genre that’s starting to slip into the generic, id could have revitalised it and instead they made something this derivative? They changed the gaming world and rocked the real one for which I’ll always love them. But id did go gentle into that good night.

2011 | Developer id Software | Publisher Bethesda Softworks

Platforms; Win, PS3, X360

Batman Arkham Knight

A Rage Quit review

Batman Arkham City was one of FBT’s favourite games. Will the Knight ruin it for him?

Rocksteady’s Arkham Asylum finally allowed us to say ‘I’m Batman’ and mean it. Bats was largely grounded and faced appalling boss battles but AA was brilliant – gaming’s Batman Begins. And then Rocksteady gave us The Dark Knight as a follow up; Arkham City. Freed of the boxed-in Asylum, it was Escape from New York and you were Snake in a Cape. With the exception of yet more infuriating watch-and-learn-with-Bats boss battles, AC was one of the best games of all time, a towering achievement of gaming and story-telling worthy of any graphic novel. And now, Arkham Knight – Dark Knight Rises or Batman and Robin? I’ll give you a clue; Robin’s in it. Oh yeah. I’ll give you another clue – this review is filed under Rage Quit.

After the ending of AC, Gotham is bracing itself after the power-vacuum left by Bats and Joker’s epic battle. This time it’s Scarecrow, who was roundly beaten by Bats in the previous games – well, beaten, inhaled his own fear toxin and chewed on by Killer-Croc – Understandably pissed off, Scares unleashes a toxin causing Gothamites to go murderously insane. Everyone except the law-breakers scarper. And Bats.

The city is extraordinary to look at, like it was designed by a fan of The Crow having a fever-dream after reading a book about Art Deco while watching Metropolis and listening to the Bladerunner soundtrack. Its twisting labyrinth streets, uneven rooftops, modern-on-gothic look makes for a rainy, gritty, dirty maze of crime and grime. It’s perfect. It’s perhaps the most beautiful and detailed game world I’ve ever seen, decay and misery included. Never mind you had to own a Sunway to run it (Ok Google, what’s the world’s most powerful supercomputer?) – this is worth upgrading for. Gothman is sheer rotting beauty.

From a lithe and leafy Poison Ivy, Bats learns that Scares’ toxin is only the start; he clubbed the Rogues Gallery together to support him in destroying Gotham. Before Bats can even grimace at the idea of Gotham dying, a militia force rolls in, tanks and tech’ed to the teeth and starts pulling the town apart looking for him, commanded by the mysterious Arkham Knight, who has the kind of hatred for Bats that borders on the fanatical, becoming fantastical, eventually farcical. Time and time again he has the chance to kill Bats but doesn’t take it, conveniently says it’s not time for him to die, or leaves him alone to escape; “I’m going to place him in an easily escapable situation involving an overly elaborate and exotic death” – Arkham Knight is Dr Evil. But for now, we’re only concerned about the tanks rolling in. Of course, this Bat doesn’t take things lying upside down.

Bats in AC was fear gliding over the city. In AK he’s a bus driver with a grudge, the one that waits till you nearly reach it then shuts the doors. Once you get control of the beast-like Batmobile, it’s the only way to travel. It’s a monster and better than the Tumbler – It is. It’s a terrifying joy just to look at, Bats’ mood rendered in cold dead steel. It looks like the kind of thing Death would drive – talking of Death, there’s no way Bats’ no-kill policy extends to the Batmobile, without doubt that thing kills people. Aside from that, the sheer destruction you cause just turning a corner is doing Scarecrow’s work for him. It has two settings, pursuit and battle mode. Battle mode works yet doesn’t. The BM basically becomes a crab, able to sidle side to side, spin around, but why turn into a merry-go-round when under attack? Bats has always been about Arrive, Express how much he hates crime, Leave. Why is stationary is the best defence? Is it because the tanks stay still once they see the BM? That’s lucky. The pursuit mode lets you fire disabling rockets at vehicles but it handles like a caravan and goes like a rocket so it’s all so fraught and crashy until you activate battle-mode and it turns into a ballerina. It’s just not the assured, dominant pose you expect from Bats; the thugs are more scared of Bats behind the wheel than the wheel itself.

It’s great to drive once you get used to it, assuming you have enough fingers to operate all the options, but within the game it’s a gimmick. Rather than a complement to his crime-fighting ways there’s convoluted reasons to use it, and everything is solved by either gliding or driving – not both, you don’t get to choose how to approach a problem. You’re also confined to close-quarter chases when it should be GTA Gotham; you never really open it up, let lose. You can remote control it too, but that’s irritatingly underused or forced in as a problem-solver.

So, apart from Knight and his boo-hissing, Scarecrow’s open-season means we also tangle with Azrael, who’s interesting appearances in AC are completely undermined, mockney Penguin doing something or other, Two-Face for padding, and then there’s helium-voiced Harley Quinn; she should be a loose-cannon threat given Mr J’s fate but she’s got nothing to do and only there because we’d complain if she wasn’t. There’s a ton of filler-villains too; zeroes like Man-Bat, Professor Pyg and Firefly are crammed in (Can’t we find something better to do than chase a fly? You don’t even get to smoosh him on the BM’s grill). But the real rager is Riddler. Taking convenient advantage of the Batmobile, he sets a route of time-based chases around Gotham’s sewer system for Bats to conquer. There’s a city filling with poison, do you really have time to play Mario Kart, Bats? Yes, because Riddler has kidnapped Catwoman. She’s not key to the poison plot or anything, but we’re all a sucker for Rocksteady’s Catwoman. The issue is though, Bats always out-thinks his opponents – sure he’s got the gadgets, the cash and the bod, but his mind was his super-power. Yet in AK he just goes along with Riddler’s demands, jumps through his hoops to save Catwoman. He doesn’t outwit him, figure ways around the problems, he just solves them. Boring. And reducing Catwoman to a damsel in distress is a huge disservice to one of the more interesting female characters in Batman. In AC she was hot and formidable, Bats’ equal. Riddler may be helping Scarecrow to distract Bats, but he would have known that – plus Catwoman is imprisoned, not in danger so from our perspective it’s filler and annoying for it. I get so bored with Rids’ games I leave Catwoman chained up.

While the thugs are largely the same, the Knight’s men are anti-Bat trained; electrified fields, the ability to revive fallen comrades, armed with mini-guns, tasers, blades, they can also counter Bats’ moves and scan to spot where he is. The best thing about AC brawling was Bats had the tactical and technical superiority; they just had numbers. Now they have both and the fights turn into button-mashing scraps. It was fun to fight in AC, test Bats’ mettle; now it’s an annoyance. I once played AC for so long the entire city was silenced. I’d offed every thug in Arkham. There’s so much locked down arena fighting in AK it’s more Tekken than Taken; Bats should be brutal and efficient, not hopping around in the background like Pumaman. Bats can be accompanied by Catwoman, Robin or Nightwing and reaching a certain streak-count allows you to body swap; sounds cool but it’s a bit gimmicky and who cares, I’m Batman; just make fighting more satisfying.

We’re also supported by Gordon and his daughter Oracle as well as the occasional dry comment from Alfred. We even get to use the police precinct to doss about in, pick up crimes in progress and drop off the side-villains we take down. AK has some RPG DNA in it, and you wish Knight and Scarecrow would naff off and let us tidy up the city in the Batmobile instead of all this ominous stuff. There is one ominous element that almost saves AK though.

Bats has another side-kick … The Joker. This is a brilliant dynamic. Bats and Joker have always had a complicated relationship, so to have Joker in his mind, reminding him of his failures and his guilt is proper stuff. It’s the best thing in the game as Joker corrodes Bats’ mind and looks set to take over completely, intertwining with the main plot (until Knight’s histrionics make everything daft again) and its really good when Bats conveniently needs to get a little crazy (It’s a shame it’s scripted though, would have been great to get Joker-time as an option like bullet-time). They have some great moments together.

The plot of AK is huge, epic and a fitting end to the trilogy; everything that is happening is Bats’ fault – Scarecrow’s revenge has been a thread throughout the series and more and more people get pulled into – or pay for – Scarecrow’s obsession and Bat’s actions. The game asks if Bats is really doing the right thing, or just making things worse. And it’s played out in the most beautiful environment, by a Bats at his most grizzled and agitated, with all the usual suspects, and the Batmobile – and we’ve even got the Joker doing a Tyler Durden. AK is pure class, and I’m still giving up on this gem? Hell yes.

AK has a lot of annoyances – the fights aren’t fun, the Batmobile has a puncture, Riddler is an idiot and Knight is Widow Twanky with a painfully obvious secret identity. But the real rage-quit is AK’s habit of rug-pulling. The plotting is like one of those old 30’s serials where each episode ends with certain death then the next tells us Rocketman or Flash actually escaped in time. There’s some real mouth-hits-the-floor, eyes-wide, ‘holy shit’ moments where you really think Bats can’t come back from this. Game-changing, narrative-impacting, how-you-play and how you feel moments. And … then it undoes the moment. This happens at least three times – as far as I got anyway, who knows if there’s more.

At the risk of a spoiler, a perfect example is the fate of the Batmobile. After a huge (and daft) fight with Knight in the sewers the Batmobile is destroyed. DESTROYED?! No! OMB. Now what? I feel naked, worried about how I’ll get about town, the toxin everywhere, the tanks, this is real hell-no, game-changing stuff. I’m terrified and excited, and we’re stuck trying to rescue someone, surrounded by tanks and … wait, Bats isn’t worried … oh yeah, just call Alfred and get Batmobile Mk2 delivered. Which is actually a meatier and better version. What?! Fine that Bats has a spare, but games always put you in extreme situations and you go along with it because that’s the world you’ve been told exists – it was Bats, trapped in the city, alone. If Bats can just call in backup, if Alfred can pilot a replacement then the world changes; roll everything out – get the Batwing to take out the militia, have Nightwing rescue Catwoman, Robin can chase Firefly; let me and Joker go get a beer. It sounds like a whinge but it changes the reality we trusted the game to maintain. The other twists are even more of a betrayal because they undercut emotional reactions. They’re soap-opera twists. In AK it turns out J.R shot himself.

Another example of the game’s treachery; when the militia’s commander-in-chief is run off, what happens? Another Merc rocks up and takes over. Where did he come from, why didn’t he get involved earlier? What, he was just sitting in the super-villain waiting room?! You kept a spare henchman, Scarecrow? It’s exactly the same, just different voice goading you. The game can’t let things change too much because there’s so much non-linear stuff going on it would impact – Bats needs the BM outside the main mission, so it has to reappear and that’s a cheat, like Skyrim had Dragons that don’t damage anything and a civil war you never see, AK gives you show-stoppers then restarts the show rather than having the guts to let it stay changed. Each time you think this is the boldest, bleakest, bravest Bats ever and then it double-crosses you. I can’t believe AK became a let-down, especially after how AC played out. That game stuck to its shocks. I’ve had enough. To the Bat-Exit.

Arkham Knight opens with the line ‘this is how the Batman died’. This game pranked me so many times I suspect Bats doesn’t die either. AK gets so much right; it can make you gasp in shock, at it’s beauty, the story, but eventually you’re gasping in annoyance.

2015 | Developer Rocksteady Studios | Publisher WB Interactive

platforms; Win | PS4 | XO

Total Overdose

A Blast from the Past review

FBT remembers when he was a Mexican not a mexican’t.

My memories of TO are good. I spout on about insane gameplay, a DGAF attitude and feeling like I was in a Mexican GTA. I also remember I picked it up solely because it’s tagline was ‘Chili Con Carnage’; You knew what you were in for. I recalled TO as the granddad of Bulletstorm and Saints Row III, games that let you play insane.

But when I try to remember specifics, I struggle. I take this to mean it wasn’t important, I was too busy living a Rodriquez movie; I can’t really remember what GTA 3 was about either, beyond the fact Claude never spoke (Or maybe he did and I don’t remember), so not recalling any detail doesn’t make a game unmemorable … it’s the experience you took from it and I would describe TO as great, but have no demonstrable specifics to back that up. It was great though, honest.

Thinking about it though, if I consider TO so great why’d I only play through once? It came out in 2005 and the budget edition a year later (big seller then) and within that time there were a few other distractions; Star Wars’ Republic Commando and Battlefront 2, FEAR, Quake 4, Gun, King Kong, Just Cause and TES Oblivion to mention a few, many of which are still being mentioned ten years on yet TO is long forgotten; was it Bulletstorm, one of those underground games only a few knew about or was it best forgotten? Deadline Games, the devs weren’t high-end but it was shepherded by Square Enix who’d overseen Tomb Raider and Thief so it had pedigree. Plus, my copy had avoided the great eBay purge of 2007 (when Steam started releasing major non-Valve games and I figured everything would be on there soon – Still waiting, NOLF) so something about TO stopped me from parting with it. Time to work out what’s going down in Mexico.

Shoulda stayed there?

So after two production credits that feature Day of the Dead characters dancing in skeleton outfits (one in a sombrero) I already wish I’d played this hundreds of times. I can tell this is going to be awesome. Mexican rap plays over the menu and I feel like I’m in Desperado. Then I’m into the story. I’m a DEA agent whose cover has been blown, attempting to escape some airfield and being shot at by drug runners. I begin by sliding down a zip-rope uzi’ing the smugglers and then take out everyone between me and my plane; which once aboard, I’m promptly thrown out of by my double-crossing extraction team, bought out by the drug kingpin I’ve sworn to bring down. Given how heroic I’ve just been, I expected to have expected this, but I didn’t and I’m actually dead. The action then switches to later and I’m now playing my son, also a DEA agent who is also in deep cover in the same kingpin’s crew to prove dad didn’t die of an ‘overdose’ – what kind of drug gets you so high you die from the fall? Let’s not worry about it, the game is either joking around or doesn’t care, and that’s part of its appeal – As the son, I’m instructed to drive a car towards a gas truck and use a ‘stunt exit’ option. I slo-mo out of the car as it crashes causing an explosion, then I wipe out everyone around me. Finally, down to me and one last guy who taunts me with a grenade, in cut-scene I shoot him between the eyes then stand about looking cool, before realising the grenade landed by a petrol pump. It goes up and so do I. Does every mission end with the death of my character?! No, I survive although with a broken leg. I’m then transported into the son’s wayward twin brother who has been released from prison on the understanding he’ll pretend to be who his brother was pretending to be and continue his (their father’s) work to bring down mr kingpin. Got it so far? In return, my sentence will be reduced (so, I’m in prison and the DEA sends me to a country with no extradition order and expects me to infiltrate a drug business filled with criminals in return for reducing my sentence? Again, don’t sweat the small stuff). Cue opening credits. What a start!

Once in the Mexican city, I do various small criminal jobs to attract the interest of the Kingpin then work my way to his side by doing missions alongside various side quests to build up health and xp. So far, so typically free-roam but the initial fun has worn off and I start to see how old this plays (despite being built on Renderware, the same engine that underpinned GTA SA the year before); the cars drive worse than Driver which was 6 years old and the on-foot sections are less refined than GTA 3, 4 years earlier. I try to remind myself it’s a decade old but it plays like a decade before that. It’s not from some deep-pocketed dev so you can forgive some creakiness, some unrefined gameplay but you’d expect more than this. By 2005 driving, running and general mayhem were, if not a fine art, past blocky characters and wobbly car behaviours. It’s just not fun to play and worse, not nice to look at.

Deadline Games seem to be on their first major free-roam game here, but whereas Stainless Games managed to pull off Carmageddon, DG seems to have made a vanilla GTA; but it’s actually softer than that; this is Midtown Madness meets Blake Stone; not mad or bad enough to actually be anything but a Clone and a largely inoffensive one at that. Worse, the world is tiny with very little to interact with or get lost in. There’s nothing to see and all too soon I give up wandering. You never feel like you’re in a Mexican town let alone one controlled by a drug cartel, it’s a bland featureless concrete area with no interaction, where running is preferable to driving and the side missions are all races or brawls, which get dull quick.

While many story missions are great in their layout (a level in an abattoir is a standout) and there’s some nice cinematic cut-scenes, they’re hamstrung not just by the featureless look but the shootouts themselves aren’t especially exciting. Baddies stand and shoot or run at you, they’re hidden in areas they couldn’t possibly have chosen to stand in unless they knew you’d walk past and every single door will have someone behind it; it’s so simple it’s like playing a shooter from the Doom era. To spice it up you have bullet-time and insane power-ups including reversing time, onscreen graphics congratulating good kills and comments from our hero (‘spicy move!’, his favourite phrase is uttered over and over) but it all comes across as set-dressing, gimmicky after a while and irritating soon after. This is one of those games where the engine and development just couldn’t compete with the concept and spirit and that’s best illustrated by the launch trailer that still makes TO look like the game you always wanted someone to make.

Maybe much of this banality could be overlooked if it was great shakes with storyline and characters – a gaming element not curtailed by budget or graphical constraints – but while in the game’s head you’re Antonio saving a feisty Salma-alike, the reality is a cliché story and strained, obvious dialogue.

When TO came out in 2005, Free-roam (Sandboxing, nonlinear, open-world, whatever) was in its most exciting period. We’d had three GTAs, Morrowind and Far Cry building up to Boiling Point, Oblivion, Gun and Just Cause and barely a year after that Assassin’s Creed, Crysis and STALKER. TO was dead in the centre but there’s none of the reckless enthusiasm that pervaded those games; if TO’s limitations were down to a budget constraint, then they should have constrained themselves to a clean linear game and dropped the free-roam. Released around TO was Call of Duty 2, FEAR and Doom 3 – not suggesting TO should have reached for those lofty heights but how much more immersive could TO have been as a straight shooter with all the free-roam work funnelled into a real Drug Cartel experience saving a Mexican town.

In the end, Total Overdose isn’t just dated, it was five years too late to the (open) world. Despite my disappointment at finding my memory lied to me, it had its moments; our hero yells lines other than Spicy on rare occasion that get a snigger, flies descend on your kills, if you shoot a guy wearing a hat, it’ll fly into the air. Position yourself under it and your hero will be wearing it until it gets shot off. It has flashes of brilliance that makes TO feel like an unfinished game, like it’s still in beta phase. It’s frustrating because it could have been so much more; it’s got a lot to give – but there’s no world to be given it in.

2005 | Developer Deadline Games / Square Enix | Publisher SCi / Eidos Interactive

Platforms; Win | PS2 | XBox

Mafia III

A Rage Quit review

TheMorty had been so looking forward to playing a mafioso.

There must be some kind of way outta here, said the Joker to the thief
There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief…

Well, they can’t say they didn’t warn us. The writing was well and truly plastered all over the wall from the very beginning of the game as Hendrix’ iconic cover of ‘All Along the Watchtower’ boomed over the title screen. Call me nostalgic, but I hadn’t been this excited for a game since Saints Row 4. Nearly 7 years since the last Mafia game and we’re thrust straight into an unexplored era of America. Sure, we’d had the 40s and 50s with Mafia II, the 80s with Vice City, the birth of hip hop with 1990s San Andreas but I always felt there was a big gaping hole where sandbox games had just failed to explore the period in-between. Think of the soundtrack alone, The Beatles and Stones, the height of New Orleans R&B and the astronomic rise of disco and Motown. The announcement trailer alone filled me with anticipation as there was a previously unexplored opportunity to relive a golden period in history and have a break from the comparable norm of what’s been a very generic offering of third person shooters in the recent marketplace.

Perhaps the biggest draw of all was the idea of playing a mixed-race protagonist that carried all the stereotypical attributes of the badass from the Bayou during a period rife with racism. Surely there’s nothing more character defining than overcoming the extremely racist Italian-American mob on their own turf? Hell, the game even carried a warning that it was going to be extremely non-pc and felt it necessary to condone dropping the N-bomb as often as possible to stay true to the abhorrent problems that the character would undoubtedly have faced at that time. I mean wow, that obliterates the feeble cop-out of a warning from the Assassins Creed anthology – “we’ve got Christians, Muslims and Atheists working on this game, honest… ask me mum”. Surely all the above considered we’re going to be in for one hell of a journey… right?

Alas, I was conned. Sucked into the abyss by the siren of Jimi’s wailing Gibson SG Custom. Instead of the thought provoking, immersive story the preamble had promised to deliver – what followed was a hastily-released, buggy and boring mess without a resemblance of substance or stamina. A game that would not only leave me feeling disappointed, but one that made me fear for the future of a fantastic company that has delivered two of this sites all-time top ten games in Borderlands and Bioshock.

The game starts as it means to go on and opens in a tedious method of non-linear storytelling – a Black Mass-style interview with key players some years after the narrative ends. “I knew Lincoln as a boy” queue flash back to Lincoln being a boy… you get the drill. After an overly prolonged backstory about how I was a Vietnam vet (who would clearly suffer from PTSD before the game was out) the tutorial level began. As with all lecture levels, they’re dull – like teaching your granny how to suck eggs or Duke Nukem how to bed strippers. I’m on a job, dressed as a security guard and I get given my first “Choice”, kill a man or wound him. I pondered it. What would a future gangster do; kill him and keep him quiet or show humility. Turns out that what I do here makes absolutely no difference to the outcome (Commander Shepherd, Lincoln is not!) so of course, you pop the guy. Heading outside, we climb into an armoured security van. Grabbing the steering wheel for the first time, I take out a fence, crash through a gate and collide into a tree. Bloody hell, what am I driving? An oil tanker with a caravan hitched onto the back??!! Fair enough it’s the late 60s and power steering was more of a luxury than a standard – but this is ridiculous. On reflection, maybe it was my fault. While waiting for the game’s 30gb download I took a trip to Los Santos and spent three hours messing around in GTA V. Maybe the smooth cornering, quick breaking and responsive handling of my souped up Zentorno was the equivalent of filling up on bread at a nice restaurant and being unable to eat the main meal. Still, it doesn’t excuse how bad the driving mechanics are here. Like GTA IV, there’s two driving modes in Mafia – normal and simulated. Now, one is supposed to be the generic VG style driving mode – except trying a cool handbrake slide at half speed sends you flying into the Lagoon – the other, which per the game menu is a “fully realistic driving experience”, allows you to corner at 100kph without the need to brake. Who wrote that part of the game – the Stig? It’s frustrating given that driving is pretty much the cornerstone of any city-based sandbox game and to get it so fundamentally wrong was always going to make that inevitable time-trial mission even more impossible.

Not wanting to spoil, the tutorial missions end in the all too familiar gangster style. The double cross. Leaving Lincoln angry, bereaved and frustrated as hell. He’s on the warpath and won’t stop until he gets his revenge. Sounds promising, perhaps I can look past the poor driving mechanics…

Once the cut scenes are out of the way and the tutorial mission has been finished, I can finally free-roam. I head to my safe house and notice my wardrobe contains a nice little pre-order bonus pack of outfits. Thanks 2K, very kind of you. Oh, wait, you’ve given me one that makes me look exactly like Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson – I’m wearing it. Sod the 70s. This will be fun for the next 20 minutes at least. The generic costume is typical war-vet attire. Dog tags, big boots, green jacket – I’m looking very Travis Bickle (lazy Scorsese reference #2,458).

Sod that, dressed in my pre-order attire I leave the house, jump in my car and head over to the first mission point. As I walk through the door, something feels off, is it a trap? Am I about to get whacked? Nope. I’m dressed like Travis Bickle again for the cut scene. Are you serious? it’s 2017 and you’re still using QuickTime cut scenes? Character customisation is pretty basic these days; I mean most iOS and arcade games can cope with integrating your unique character look into cut scenes – why have bother even having a customised character if you can’t include them into the most powerful and memorable aspects of your story. Two seconds ago, I had a bic’d bonce now I’ve got a full head of hair. You’re beginning to irritate me Mafia and with a full shelf of games on my to-play list, you’re on real thin ice!

One of the new features in Mafia III allows you to have underbosses to your empire of crime (oh yeah, we’re 10 minutes in and have already forgot about revenge – we’re already thinking ahead before we’ve even had chance to spill some blood!). The first of which is Cassandra, a woman with the Haitian Mob who owns a voodoo shop in Delray Hollow. We “rescue” this girl in one of the earlier tutorial missions, not realising she’s the brains of the operation. I’m starting to like where the games going with this. A strong, black female in a world filled with powerful, white males – surely this promises to be tasty.

The first mission for Cassandra fully immerses you in the games fighting system. It’s quite good, but annoyingly you can’t use it unless you’re in stealth mode. I learned this the hard way, walking up to a group of gang members outside a bar thinking I’m going to go full Batman in Arkham City, when one of them shouts “hey, it’s him” causing his crew to whip out their shotguns and with one blast put Lincoln down – costing me a cool 50% of my wallet, Borderlands style. So not only are shotguns pretty much the BFG of Mafia III, but prepare to lose a lot of cash if you don’t make regular trips to your safe house to store the cash in your safe. Oh, that’s right. You must physically bank your cash. Again, something that should have been left behind in the stone age of gaming.

I’m trying to persevere with this so I head to the next mission and with it, a little more of the map is unlocked. I can now do missions to reclaim my turf – like CJ and Big Smoke’s missions to take over the hood for the Grove Street Families. Yes! Let’s make this map a little greener… I dive into the nearest enemy warehouse and enter stealth mode – taking out the lookouts on the door before making my way through the floor and up the stairs to where the piles of drugs are held. I attach some C4 and move on – looting a pile of cash in the head honcho’s office as I choke him out from behind. I wring the place dry, taking out every enemy and watching my XP slowly rise in the process before triggering the C4 and blowing the drugs. I’m a few quid better off and can move on to the next red hotspot on the minimap – this time it looks like it’s in a bar. I sneak around back armed with my signature Colt (avec silencer) and eliminate the guy on the payphone. Once he’s out of the way, I edge into the back room and take out the two guys in the office – helping myself to a chunk of cash and picking up the collectible playboy mag to appeal to the 14-year-old boys playing the game. Moving into the bar, I get spotted. Quick on the draw, I shoot the mobster sipping his scotch before he can even raise his pistol and then take out the other guy just in time before he leaves the building to sound the alarm for reinforcements. Smooth Clay, two hideouts hit, without a single triggered alarm. Maybe there’s some hope for this title after all…

At this point, I’ve been away from the story for a while, so I figure – best head over to Cassandra’s place to start the next story mission. When I get there, I enter the house dressed as Bickle again (FFS!) and Cassandra proceeds to tell me of some pesky drug smugglers holed up in a warehouse nearby (hmm, this sounds familiar…) and how she’d be ever so grateful if I could get rid of them for her. The cut scene ends, I leave the house and I’m dressed as The Rock. I follow the nav-point and as I’d feared – I’m back at the warehouse I’ve just cleaned out 20 minutes previous, only problem being the whole safe house has respawned. Same number of people, same positions, same AI movement. The only difference… no more cash to steal! How dreadfully dull and pointless. So again, I stealth around the room taking much less care than I ever did the first time, expending more ammo and using far too much health than I need as my brain desperately tries to avoid boredom during the repetition of the task. After 5 or so minutes, the coast is clear. I’ve taken everyone out and head back to Cassandra. “Thanks Lincoln”, no bother Cassy – what you got for me now – A high-speed chase… high profile assassination… what’s next on the agenda? “There’s a group of guys in a bar I need taking care of…” You’ve got to be shitting me. The bar I’ve just been in? Now I must re-do that again too? Honestly lads, why even try to be a sandbox game and offer the illusion of choice if all you intend to do is force me to play this as a linear third person shooter – and why am I dressed like Bickle AGAIN!! So not only does the game not reward you financially for doing twice the work, but it makes an open world free-roaming game extremely linear. There’s absolutely no point in exploring any of the map until after you’ve completed the story missions in that part of town – so why bother.

Understandably annoyed, I carry on and complete a few more side-missions before finally getting a unique task; take down Ritchie Doucet. Doucet’s a man aligned to the Dixie Mafia who happens to be holed up at a rundown theme park. Perhaps my favourite mission on the game, I arrive on a boat and sneak into the park. Think Bond if Idris Elba ever gets the gig. Making my way around various obstacles and taking out Douchet’s lieutenants in Deus Ex-style fashion was quite fun, despite the lack of space you can still combining long range shots and short range combat quite effectively without starting World War III. I finally track down the Boss and he takes more than a few bullets to put down but eventually – he’s toast. I’m Lincoln Clay. I’m a man to be feared. I’m again dressed like the love-child of Rambo and Travis Bickle. Sigh.

The game doesn’t progress much past this point, continuing to recruit underbosses while almost always being forced into running errands for them. What happened to the powerful shift in ethnic power? I’ve now got an Irishman and an Italian on the books and no-one gets on with one another. Oh, and why have I become so obsessed with making money that I’ve forgot about my revenge? I thought that was the whole point of playing through the most monotonous of missions in this games?!

The last straw was the hunt for Sal Marcano’s nephew, Michael Grecco (another lazy Scorsese reference). Mission after mission comes and goes as we repeat the same old task reskinned for different locations to hit Grecco in the pocket and force him out of hiding. Finally, he appears and away we go on what should be an epic car chase. As previously mentioned, the car handling is god awful in this game so imagine how bad it is trying to aim, shoot and steer without breaking your thumbs – all while trying to stop Grecco’s escape. 10 minutes later and I’m still nowhere near Grecco as he inconceivably evades Lincoln whenever you get close enough to deliver a meaningful shot across the bow. Despites his motor being the same model as Lincoln’s he somehow manages to hit Mach speeds whenever you’re near. I eventually get close to him, he’s in shooting distance and I’m locked on his driver’s side rear-wheel ready to pull the trigger and blow out his tyres; bringing this dreadful assignment to its conclusion.

Just as my trigger finger is clenched and I’m about to gun him down, out of nowhere and as if by magic, a 20-tonne garbage truck spawns right in front of me. Where on Earth did that come from? I slam right into the back of it and blood covers the screen. Grecco gets away and the mission fails.

Genuinely, I haven’t seen rendering or draw distance this bad since the original Midtown Madness running on my late 90s Pentium 2. The mission restarts from the beginning. I’m furious. I don’t have time for this, I’m out. I quit. It’s just not worth the hassle.

I expect this from the likes of ‘True Crime: Streets of LA’, ‘Sleeping Dogs’ or even from ‘Just Cause’ but to play one of the most anticipated games of the year from a heritage franchise and to be so brutally let down borders on disgrace. The game just doesn’t know what it wants to be. It’s taken the best aspects of several different genres and got them all horribly wrong. No wonder it was down to £19.99 only a month after its release and can now be seen floating around the bargain bins of second hand gaming stores. If you can’t compete with GTA then be different. Something Saints Row have prided themselves on across four wildly different games. If you don’t want to compete, then fine – but at least stick to what you do well. FarCry Primal is a great example of where a copy and paste game can go right, you just need to tap into your consumers longing to be back in the world they love, even if it is just a re-skin of what they’ve played before.

The game just feels like it’s 8-10 years behind the times and while the story feels like it might be going somewhere, the pacing is snail at best. It’s not only seen me question the integrity of a reputable gaming brand, but it’s see me never want to watch another Scorsese movie again. Bravo lads and lasses, you took Goodfellas, Casino, The Departed and Taxi Driver and somehow managed to make Shutter Island. You utter, utter buffoons.

2016 | Developer Hangar 13 | Publisher 2K Games / Take-Two Interactive

genres; RPG, Free-roam, Driving

platforms; Win, PS4, XO