Carmageddon

The Good

Easy to jump right in and play

Intense bursts of speed

Great track design with surprising amounts of freedom

Ridiculous physics are entertaining

Great sound effects

Grisly but cathartic deaths

Plenty of visceral moments and feelings of vertigo

Crashes actually give the feeling of impact

Addictive arcade style gameplay

Fun multiplayer

Cool cars

Good vehicle damage models

**The Bad**

Some people may be turned off by offensive content

Uneven difficulty curves

Some bugs break the game in various ways

Putting in a password on each startup is annoying

Extremely ugly, outdated graphics

Earning brand new cars left up to random chance

Redbook audio is always a pain

Runs in DOS despite 1997 release date

Dares don't really amount to anything

**The Bottom Line**
In 1975, a film called "Death Race 2000," starring the late but great David Carradine (Best known for the legendary "Kung Fu" television series and the more recent "Kill Bill" films) was released into theatres. The concept was basic: A cross country race as a form of entertaining and pacifying rowdy and restless civilians; the twist being that this race isn't about coming in first place, the winner is chosen by how many innocent civilians and other racers are killed in the process. The film wasn't well received, many critics and parents were offended by the films tasteless content. It was excessively gory, almost every female character in the film whipped out their breasts or went stark naked at least once, and the films sense of humour was extremely morbid and bleak, treating vehicular manslaughter and sexism as comedic relief. The film did gather a cult following (Including my wife & I) and whether you like it or not, it is arguably the prototypical "Blood Sport Opiate" film, appearing over a decade before "The Running Man," which is the film most people think of when dealing with a premise involving a blood sport as pacifying entertainment. You're probably asking yourself, "What the hell does this have to do with Carmageddon?" Well, it has a lot to do with it. Carmageddon is clearly inspired by the film, in fact during its development process, it was going to be titled "Death Race 2020" and presented as a tie in with the comic book of the same name, intended as a sequel to the film. However, they could not keep the rights to the franchise and the name was dropped but in truth it can still be called a Death Race video game. Save for a complete lack of breasts (Sorry, nudie fans), the game mimics the film exactly, from its tasteless sense of humour to its ridiculous amounts of gore and disregard for the laws of physics. Unfortunately, this lack of tact might turn a lot of people off which is a shame because if you look past this element, its one of the most entertaining games ever made and it would easily make my top 10 games of all time and there's almost no competition when it comes to being my favourite racing game, the closest being Need For Speed 3. The game is presented like your standard 3D racer, but it pans out very differently. The game is much more arcade focused, based on score more than pole position. This allows players to jump into the game quickly and not have to worry about falling into 8th place immediately and working tirelessly to get all the mechanics down. At the start of each race, you have a time limit like many other racers, but its not too hard to bring this time limit up. You can increase your time limit by getting points, which are achieved by damaging or destroying enemy vehicles, running over pedestrians, or getting time bonus pickups. You lose if your time limit is up, but this is rare, though keeping a high time limit is a good idea and the higher your time limit, the more points you get when you finish a race. Finishing a race can be achieved in multiple ways as well. You can do it the old fashioned way, going from checkpoint to checkpoint and doing laps, but since pole position doesn't matter you will often focus on racking up points while moving from checkpoint to checkpoint. You can also win a race by destroying all your opponents. Vehicle combat is very fun and no doubt inspired games like Burnout as you beat your opponents by crashing into them or staging elaborate crash scenarios. This is a lot of fun because the game really packs a lot of punch into the crashes, and you feel some impact whenever you make a high speed crash. The final and most arduous way to win a race is to kill every single pedestrian. Even though it is cathartic to run over pedestrians and you will no doubt kill plenty racking up that score, its not worth going after every civilian because there are hundreds and it can wear thin driving to every nook and cranny to find them. The tracks are elaborate and well designed. They are extremely large and encourage exploration, which also adds to the replay value. There are several alternate paths that lead to more pedestrians and power ups, which often have bizarre but undeniably funny results. Some power ups do have standard invulnerability or speed boosts, but the ones that are the most entertaining are the ones that stick a monkey wrench in the already over the top physics, such as the power up that makes your car drive on only two wheels and collects scrap metal and giblets or the power up that makes you bounce around. Nothing blows off steam like picking up a bounce power up and bouncing randomly into a herd of cows or bouncing an opponents car and literally flattening it. The physics are over the top, and I wouldn't have them any other way. The game is extremely fast and visceral. You'll fly through the air, spin around, bounce, flip, crush, get crushed, and defy the laws of physics in every way possible. But it only adds to the fun. The speed and physics are detailed despite being so silly, and you'll often get that funny feeling in your gut that you get when you go down a free fall or a slope in a roller coaster. This makes the game thrilling and fast paced. The biggest problem with the physics is that the controls suffer for it. The controls are slippery and cornering is pretty much impossible unless you are a god. You'll spin out of control all the time and while this can result in entertaining scenes, it can get annoying when you are trying to focus on getting to the next checkpoint, getting a specific powerup, or trying to ram an opponent. The game supports a joystick, but they are very hard to configure and they are just as slippery if not more so. The arcade style can be addicting, not only is it simply fun to climb the score board, the developers have added a few hooks to keep you playing. To progress in the game, you must progress a ladder. You start at rank 99 and will increase in rank for every race you win. Depending on your score, your rank increase will range from 2 to 6. This system is a little stingier in harder difficulties, but this is to be expected. You beat the game once you reach rank 1, and if you own the "Max Pack" version of the game like I do, there is a second disc that has another campaign that is equally good and addicting. There are some confusing aspects of the core gameplay, mostly revolving around how to get new cars and "dares." Dares are occasionally given by other racers, but they don't really have any requirements and don't bode any rewards. No cash bonus, no point bonus, no bonuses of any kind, and all the dare does is swap your position at the starting grid; which doesn't even effect the gameplay anyway. The only change your position in the starting grid makes is that there is a bonus for whoever splatters the guy waving the checkered flag first. Its a completely useless addition, and it could've easily been used for bonuses, in fact it could've been used to put you and your opponents cars in the pot and if you won their dare, you get their car, if you lose, they get yours and you have to go back. Speaking of acquiring new cars, this is another confusing element. In most racing games, you use cash to buy new cars. Here, cash is used to upgrade your car, but not to buy new cars. The only way to get new cars is by random chance, which is a majour pain. Once you reach rank 89, you have a chance of winning an opponents car, provided you destroy it in the match. There is no threshhold for what car the game will reward you with and whether or not the game will even give you a new car is random. This is frustrating, especially when you are stuck with only one car half the game and the more exotic cars come in. Naturally, the cooler the car, the more the player will want it. There's a car in the game that zaps lightning at pedestrians, not only is that cool, it would've made it easier to keep a good time score while going for checkpoints. It took me literally 8 years to finally play a match and get that car, and by then I didn't really care and was pissed off at the random chance aspect. Multiplayer is fun, though it is disappointing that only 2 players can play the 2 player mode. Granted, there will still be AI drivers, but it would've been cool to have all 8 cars player controlled. Regardless, its a lot of fun to play with a bud and set up tug of war mode, a mode where you and your bud fight for the top amount of pedestrian kills in two separate track areas. The sound is excellent. The screams of pedestrians, soft bellies bursting underneath your treads, metal scraping, loud crashes, squealing tires, cheers and hollers from your drivers and so much more all sound great and make the action even more stylish. The game has a CD based soundtrack with some cool heavy metal, but sadly it uses Redbook Audio. If you don't know what Redbook audio is, let me sum it up. Redbook audio was a method used by early CD based games where the audio and the data would be separate tracks, the data would have its very own "track" while the music was placed on separate tracks and burned exactly like a music CD. This was done for two reasons; one, it would save space on the disc and the hard drive because the music wouldn't have to be copied to the hard drive or coded into the data. The other reason is because not everyone had top of the line audio cards and audio cards were still fledgling, and often couldn't handle CD quality audio without bogging the system down, but with a Redbook CD the sound card would only render the sound effects and the music would be run by the CD drive itself. The negative is that most modern computers don't like Redbook audio, its nigh impossible to get it to play the music, and even if it did work, a scratch on the disc and a single skip in the music could cause the game to crash. The last thing I wish to address are the graphics. The graphics are TERRIBLE. It would be believable that this game was made in 1995, but the fact it was made in 1997 is ridiculous. The game suffers from texture warping and pixelation. To avoid suffering migraines, you have to add a command line for hires mode, and even then it still looks outdated. Save for the cars, which have cool details and great damage modeling, everything is a pixel and levels are often very boxy. Granted, many of them take place in industrial and modern city environments, but it'd be nice to see some more curves. The sprites of the pedestrians are low res and are rendered in 8-bit colour. Come on! 8 bit colour in 1997? It was outdated in 1996! The best that can be said about these sprites is that the deaths are gruesome and detailed, and the crimson blood looks great. I will grant the graphics some amnesty, I can understand that in 1997, a game with so much chaos on screen and tons of moving sprites mixed in with the chaos might be bogged down, and a racing game without speed is like a shooter without a gun. It also doesn't help that the game is Dos based. There is a Windows 95 executable on the Max Pack edition, but ONLY on the Max Pack edition and even it doesn't look much better, in fact unless you use the highres command line, it looks worse than the dos version. You are not given a choice of resolutions, and the maximum is 640x480, with the standard being 320x200. There is also the option for Glide rendering provided you can find the proper patch, but the Glide render only works with the dos version, and getting the DOS version running fast is arduous enough without having to configure and modify the DOS executable with a glide wrapper on modern computers. Regardless of its issues, Carmageddon is one of the most fast paced, intense, visceral and downright entertaining arcade racers. Its insane, addictive, highly replayable, and if you aren't offended by its violent content, very cathartic. Carmageddon knows how to be one thing: Unabashed, brutal, intense FUN. Realism doesn't drag it down and there is never a dull moment.

The Good
Carmegeddon is a game I heard a lot about before playing it. It was after watching an episode from Lazy Game Reviews (check out his YouTube channel, it is very cool) that I eventually decided to buy the game along with its expansion pack and sequel from Good Old Games and after spending some hours with it, I discovered that this game is much more than just plain controversy.

And oh boy, was this game controversial. It already starts the moment you boot the game up. After an awesome intro movie, you get to the main menu and your cursor is nothing less than a severed hand with blood dripping from it! Yeah, that already tells you that this game is not for people with weak stomachs. And it just gets better from there on!

In Carmageddon, you compete in races all around the USA. You can win the contest in one of three ways. Passing all the checkpoints just like in a usual racing game, eliminating all the other racers by ramming into them or killing all pedestrians! Obviously, it is very tempting to just give the racing rules the middle finger and go out on a macabre, all-consuming rampage.

This game is extremely violent and has a ton of black humor. When you drive over pedestrians, they will scream out in pain and you will hear their flesh getting torn off their bodies. Slam into them with enough speed and they will swing towards your screen with chunks of man meat flying everywhere. Your wheels smear their guts over the concrete and you can keep on driving over their ripped open carcasses while looking around for your next victim. And if that wasn't enough, your driver dryly comments to the events that "shit happens" or sarcastically says "sorry" after driving over someone at speeds over 100 km an hour.

In addition, Carmageddon is about as addicting as it is bloody. As you complete races, kill pedestrians and ram your competitors out of commission, you gain credits which you can use to rank up. Unlocking new tracks and better equipment. You start at level 99 and you will have a lot of driving and slaughtering to do in order to reach the coveted level 1 rank.

When it comes to locations, you have city streets, countryside, industrial zones, mines, snow covered mountains and more! The game's timer is very generous and it is quite easy to get your timer well over ten minutes. It certainly encourages you to explore the entire map because the race track itself is just the tip of the iceberg. There are plenty of more locations to visit and people to kill when you go off the track and just drive around like a freaking maniac! Go to the beach and watch people in swimming trunks running for their lives. Visit the fields and mountains and see cows shit all over the place (literally) just before your turn them into raw steak saignant! Mmmm!

When exploring the maps, you will also find plenty of power ups and game changers. These power ups vary to extra time or credits all up to turning your ride into a bouncing machine or making it shoot electricity to zap everything you come across into a cooking, bleeding mess! Just make sure to avoid the cops, because they will ferociously hunt you down. And in case your car gets beat up or turned upside down, no worry! You can always have your car fully repaired or recovered as long as you pay for it (and you can even get into debt in case you're out of cash).

Music and sound effects are excellent. The music consists of industrial and thrash metal music with tracks made by Fear Factory as well as originally composed tracks. The soundtrack is fast, aggressive and agitating and perfectly sets the game's atmosphere. Finally, the sound effects are gruesomely crisp. Driving over someone who is already dead or about to be dead makes a painfully squishing sound and cars make screeching, ear piercing noises as they crash into walls or into each other.

The game's graphics aren't bad but not much to write home about. Much of the game is in 3D except for the pedestrians which are sprites. It definitely adds to the gory beauty of the game as polygon pedestrians would have looked awful given the time this game was released.

One last thing I want to mention is how great the game controls are. I personally never expected a pc racing game to control so smoothly. You only need to use the num pad and a few more buttons to handbrake, repair and recover your ride. That is all. No controller or steering wheel needed, just a good old keyboard.

The Bad
One thing I miss in this game is a genuine commentator. It would certainly be fun to have a game host making fun remarks about whatever ridiculous stuff you do in the game. For example, a good line after running over someone would be "Let's hope he enjoys his new tattoo" or "don't worry, you'll get a full life insurance refund for that."

Some customization for your car would have been great. Although you can unlock cars, you cannot change anything when it comes to aesthetics. It is therefore impossible to change your car's color or to add cool gadgets like spikes, hooks or other hardcore equipment.

Speaking of unlocking cars, you may think that you use credits to unlock your opponent's cars but no. You have to thrash your opponent's car an unknown random number of times in order for it to unlock. The game offers no requirements to meet in order to unlock a particular car is a matter of patience and dumb luck. And if that wasn't enough, you cannot unlock every car you see in the game. Yeah, talk about some unnecessary car teasing.

And of course, do not play Carmageddon if you dislike violent and politically-incorrect entertainment. Then it would be easier to French kiss a cobra rather than enjoying this game! But if you have even a little dark, sadistic edge, than you will enjoy this game as much as I enjoy killing bunnies with axes. Ok, just kidding, I kill them with chainsaws after driving over them with my monster truck while wearing nothing but a pigs mask on my head! Yeah, talk about bunny genocide!

The Bottom Line
A true classic in the racing genre, Carmageddon's outrageous, violent gameplay will keep you satisfied for a long time. The pc platform may not have that many racers, but with the Carmageddon series, it certainly has a big pawn on the board of racing franchises. This game definitely belongs to the collection of every self-respecting gamer. Go get it and enjoy that feeling of getting warm internal guts into your hair and face. Let's roll!

The Good
I hope you don't mind if I make a list...

*1)Free movement: you can drive the track backwards, over hills, or on roof tops - its up to you.

*2)All opponents defeated win scenerio: You don't have to win the game by running the race. I've been playing this game for over 5 years and I still haven't completed a race. Your opponents won't run the race if you don't, so you don't have to worry about them winning while you're mowing over pedestrians. They will eventually find their way back to you if you get distracted. And you can actually win the race by destroying all of your opponents vehicles, which is a good way to earn credits and time bonuses.

*3)All pedestrians murdered win scenerio: It takes time and effort to run over 400+ pedestrians, but the 50,000 credit completion bonus sure is worth it.

*4)The artistic impression bonus for running over peds in a creative manner. ;)

*5)You can use your hard-earned credits to upgrade your car: Armor, Power, and Offense.

*6)You can destroy cop cars. (Though you should probably avoid them until you've upgraded your car a couple times.)

*7)You can 'steal' your opponents vehicles. That is, you can obtain certain cars/trucks after destroying them. Note: This does not apply to all of your opponents, and the chance of getting one of these vehicles is small - you usually won't get your opponent's vehicle the first time you wreck it, though it is possible.

*8)Good physics engine. The physical contraints governing the behavior of vehicles is pretty realistic, though not perfect.

9)Real time repairs. You don't really have to worry about loosing the race, because you can always repair your car as it gets damaged. However, repairing costs credits, and if you don't accumulate enough credits during a race, you will not advance in rank.

The Bad*
Pinball mode. Only fun when you have plenty of credits to spare... :)

The game is slightly unstable in windows, and may occasionally crash during gameplay.

The Bottom Line
This is one of the most entertaining games I've ever played. It does have outdated graphics, but I don't even notice. If you can't get it to run in a dos box under Win2K or XP, try downloading and installing VDMSound at:

http://ntvdm.cjb.net/

Once installed, right click on the executionable file (Carma.exe) and select 'run with VDMS'. It's a DOS emulator that is capable of running many DOS applications that Win2k and XP can't.

The Good
As you can see from my nickname, I love the game. I'll try to tell you why.

Nowadays if you look at Carmageddon, you can't see anything remarkable in it. It has completely out-of-date graphics engine, ear-ripping sound effects and, being a DOS game, it takes some doing to get it work.

If you get past the point of disgust(No, I didn't need to pass it as I played the game right after it was published, but the current players with all the hyper GeForce cards might have to) you really start to see the sheer brilliance of the game. After you get into the game, you can't stop until it's been played from beginning to end. And suddenly you don't care about the graphics or the sounds.

The first point of brilliance is the playability of the game. The physics model is absolutely fantastic! The cars have a realistic amount of grip which alters on the change of the material you drive in. The jumps are realistic, and the car flies around and whether you land or your wheels or not depends on one thing: The laws of physics. The cars handle like a dream. The cars differ from one another, while Max Damage's car is quite easy to drive and still quite fast, Vlad's funny car is deadly fast but a true nightmare on corners. The damage model is also quite good, in fact it was one of the best at it's time but the time as made it obsolete. Still, it's good enough for the game.

Second point is the levels. There are some levels at least I don't like(like the mine and the industrial complex), but most of them are very alive. There are hundreds of pedestrians in the streets and many things you can interact with. For example you can hit a street light so hard that it falls down and then you can throw it at the pedestrians. But there's one thing that makes the levels the best: The freedom. Sure, you can race on the track, but why the hell to do that, if you can drive wherever you want?

The last point is the brilliant idea. The designers took one of the first moves to the direction that has encouraged the makers of GTA and such games to use the level of violence they use. Carmageddon was one of the first violent hits. The fact that you get points for demolishing your enemies and killing pedestrians still sounds like a good idea. SCI had the skills to make a good game out of the idea, which made Carmageddon a legend.

The Bad
The graphics, sound, and damage engines are outdated. No more critics from me.

The Bottom Line
SCI made a legendary game. It's a great shame that they couldn't keep up the quality in the sequels. Carmageddon is and seems like it's going to be the best wreck-o-rama game around for a long time to come.

The Good
Carmageddon is a fun game. Think about the movie DeathRace 2000 or the old Steve Jackson game Autoduel, Put it in a 3-Dimensional environment and you get the idea of this game.

The Graphics, in low-res are good, but not superb. Running the came on my P233 with low-res is fast. And I mean FAST. The sensation of speed in remarkable. Running the game in High-Res is very nice looking, but on my 233 is a but lagged on the frame rate.

The Gameplay is great. 17 different tracks (each unlocked as you increase in your ranking), Over 30 power-ups (such as turbo, mega-turbo, instant handbrake, and "Pinball Mode"), plenty of cars to unlock make this a game your need to work at to unlock all the secrets. You can upgrade your cars with better Armor, Engine and Tires, so as you progress through the game, your car get better and faster. The "feel" of each of the cars are different. For instance the Cop car handles a lot differently than the Electric Blue car. Another great feature of the game is "Instant Repair". Basically, it allows you to make repairs while driving at full throttle. No hassles of pitstops or repair screens in between races.

The Physics model is good. Just when you think you can make a jump and land it right, the physics engine shines! You see the car tipping just like in real life. It's pretty cool.

The Sound is good for game. It's great when you hit a jump at the right speed and the guy lets out a cool sounding yell. Unfortunately, my sound card isn't able to play the MIDI files during the game, although I can play them outside the game. But considering I can't listen to the music while playing the game, I can't give an objective opinion on it.

The AI, depending on the level of difficulty you select, is either really easy or downright impossible. On the easy settings, scoring points and credits is easy, wrecking other cars is really simple and the game is ok. On the Most difficult setting, You're lucky if you get within 100 feet of the starting line before getting the snot kicked out of you. Progressing is much harder, and wrecking cars is a long procedure.

The Bad
The Control of the cars is real touchy. I've played with a joystick, but I prefer the keyboard for control purposes. The joystick controls are very loose - it's very difficult to make turns. The keyboard is also a bit difficult to manage, but much easier to control.

The Bottom Line
It's a great game. Mindless fun - and I think each one of us who has driven down the road and played the "points" game (you know... 5 points for cones, 15 points for runners, etc.) will appreciate the game.

The Good
Carmageddon walks the line of political correctness--you are given bonus points and money for hitting pedestrians. And, I'm ashamed to say, it's incredibly satisfying and fun. Come on--what other game in the world (other than the sequel) lets you pound into those moronic rollerbladers and slow, fat pedestrians with a satisfying thud?

If you enjoy sick humor (and hey, who doesn't?), you'll have much to laugh about, as the game can get pretty sick sometimes. The amount of pure carnage is just amazing. In addition to merely smacking peds silly, you can get special bonuses for things like artistic expression and piledrivers. And don't forget the electro-bastard death ray!

I could not believe how over the top this game was until I played it. I laughed so hard the first ten minutes of gameplay that I had tears streaming down my face. It's that rediculously outrageous and silly.

Of course, you can win races by actually racing them normally and completing all the checkpoints, but that's no fun at all. It's much more fun to unleash metal-crunching power against your other race opponents--preferably by ramming them head-on. The physics engine in Carmageddon is great in this respect; you can ram another car so hard that they'll get pushed backwards, hit an explosive barrel, go flying sideways, smash into a nearby building, and keep going. This is made much more damaging if you have the pinball powerup, which makes every concrete surface act like rubber (except you still hit it very hard, like concrete).

The powerups are worth mentioning, since they provide a lot of laughs as well: Hotrod, for funnycar-like acceleration; lunar gravity, for high jumps; Jupiter gravity, for no jumps and scraping your frame against the ground all the time; solid granite car for maximum destruction; stuck peds, which makes pedestrians stick to your car after you ram them; frozen peds, which freezes them to the spot; the list goes on and on.

The Bad
There is one valid gripe with Carmageddon: The speed of the game engine. Carmageddon follows a physics model that has to account for bouncing and ricocheting off of walls, other cars, etc. This takes a lot of calculations, but I can't help thinking that they might have been able to optimize it just a little bit more. On the recommended hardware, most options have to be turned down and the game played at 320x200 to keep the framerate over 15fps. A high-res option is included, but at 2-3 fps, it's a joke.

Another gripe is actually directed at european countries--they don't get to see the full game! The European version of the game uses "robots" instead of real people with blood, and the German version uses "zombies" with green blood. That just isn't fun at all.

Finally, the gameplay starts to get repetitive after awhile.

The Bottom Line
If you need to relieve some stress, thought that the movie Dead Alive was hilarious, or generally want to smash into everything and everyone: Carmageddon is your game.

The Good
I loved the fact that you can run over innocent civilians. Simple but great idea. And you can run em over and get all kinds of special bonuses, like the splatter bones and the bonus for artistic impression etc etc. I really laughed my *ss off when i first played this game, I never had so much fun.

I loved the music. Normally I don't like rock/metal music that much, but this really adds up to the "stress killer" level of the game.

I really loved the variety of vehicles in this game. From basic sedan's with the grill removed to beetle's with spikes on top of them, bulldozers, bigfoots.... you name it, it's in the game.

I also love all the characters that drove the vehicle's. Their mugshots at the beginning of the race is all you'll ever see of them in the game, but it's always fun to know who you are racing against.

The characters can also challenge you to change positions at the start. You can accept it or "chicken out" on them.

The cops are really annoying in this game, but when you waste a cop in this game, you'll have an overwhelming sense of satisfaction. Lovely!

The Bad
Well there are some lame things about this game. First of all, you can always splatter a pedestrian by bumping lightly into them. Doesn't matter how hard you'll hit them, they'll die anyway.

Another thing that I hated were the annoying remarks from Max Damage and Die Anna. It is fun when you first play the game, but it really gets into your head when you've played the game for about 15 minutes. Fortunately you can turn that off.

The Bottom Line
This game is fun. It is repetitive, but you won't notice it that quickly. If you had a rough day, and you want to blow off some steam, then this is the game for you.

The Good
Forget the single player game, coz it gets dull pretty quick.

As a network game, this is brilliant. Don't bother with the destruction games - they take forever to play. Stick to Checkpoint Stampede, Fox and Hounds and Terminal Tag.You'll need at least 3 players to make it work, preferably more (there's a limit of 6). What you have then is more fun than should be legal - it's fun, fast, manic, laugh-out-loud funny, gut-wrenchingly-tense, and highly addictive.

The Bad
The single player game really is quite poor - the SVGA graphics mode needs at least 600MHz to play (on a game released when the P166 was king of the hill) - the sounds are poor (but you can import your own) - the game physics are really bad - the cars handling is awful - there's little sensation of speed...

I could go on, but none of these actually matter when you're running for you life in a game of Fox and Hounds.

Additionally, the network game crashes often in Windows, so you need to play it in DOS. And even then it sometimes crashes.

The Bottom Line
Got a network? Get this game. It is outstanding, and probably the most fun you'll have with your mates. Haven't got a network? Don't bother.

The Good
The thing that kept me playing this game, for 6 years now, is running over people. No, I'm not a psycho serial killer or anything, I just enjoy running over computer sprites I guess.

In this 'game', you can do whatever the hell you want. Race, don't race... whatever. Anything goes!

The Bad
I don't like the way it operates under windows 95/98. But then again, does anything run well under windows?

The Bottom Line
Best described as a kill fest, original driving game, with a 'no-holds barred' type of approach. It's fun, it's a lot of fun :)

The Good
A SCOTUS Judge sits impatiently as he listens to lawyers bickering about video game law. One argues that video games are pushing the boundaries of art and any attempt to categorize them will be short sighted. The other argues that they have unnecessary levels of graphic going to mention games where players are allowed to urinate, and encouraged to beat up hookers and go on drive by shootings. The judge feels a bit of vomit in his mouth. He finds it disturbing that people like to perform these virtual acts of sadism and call it “entertainment”. He doesn’t remember the day when the screams of 500 grannies were silenced by the screech of burning rubber, made by homicidal car drivers. Those drivers, they will never forget what it was like to be out on a Sunday drive in the countryside, the fresh smell of morning air, the usual screaming of the lambs and the whistling of the Postman Pat tune as the windscreen wipers would scrub off the bloody remains of their girlfriend’s torso. Nor shall they forget the little moments when the sound cars horn would be enough for a herd of blind people to jump off a building. Ah yes those were the days when hurling your best friends vehicle into a stone wall at 180mph was considered friendly communication. Not to mention the sheer force of it being done with a V8 engine with granite armor. They will never forget.

The Bad
Unfortunately time can impair our memories. Like an old photograph, it loses its colors and begins to fade. But the satisfaction of hearing the voices doesn’t change and only gets better with each round.

The Bottom Line
The people at SCOTUS will not remember such days. But for those who were in the middle, right there in the driver’s seat as they heard the squishy sounds of a lamb being ripped apart. They will never forget.

The Good
Well, it is very addictive at first (not as much as GTA though...)

The Bad
For one, the 3D engine is horrible. Really horrible. Slow even on a P2-350, and doesn't even look good enough to justify it. The controls are really, REALLY bad and even the pedestrians' screams aren't enough to satisfy the unwary buyer.

The Bottom Line
Leave it alone, and get it over with.