Backlog Review: Carmageddon Max Pack

To clear out my Steam backlog, I’m playing games I haven’t played on Steam before.

Carmageddon Max Pack

Time Played: 57 minutes

Done?: Maybe

Source: Kickstarter -
Carmageddon: Reincarnation

I remember getting the Carmageddon demo in an issue of PC Gamer magazine. I played that demo to death (pun partially intended). The Internet tells me that was the July 1997 issue. 20 years ago. Young, impressionable, 14 year old me had a field day with the macabre racing game where objectives were either complete the race, waste your opponents, or run over enough pedestrians. As you can imagine when there was a Kickstarter for a sequel, my nostalgia kicked into overdrive. It also helped that they threw in a copy of the original game, which I never purchased because of the hassle it would have taken to convince my parents.

Now I’m a responsible adult and can subject myself to whatever acts of violence I deem fit. It doesn’t hold much of an appeal to me anymore; it’s gross and senseless. Darn. After a few minutes of playing it, I was going to stop and never play it again. Then I started to focus on the actual race objectives.

The driving in this game is bad. I’m sure this was not the intended design and that part of the squirrelyness of the car is to encourage you to go outside of the track itself and engage with destroying cars or people. That’s where a lot of the wackiness comes in after all with odd power ups that make for zaniness.

Staying on the road is a chore. However, this became interesting. Almost like a physics puzzle to keep the car going the direction I wanted it to go. I steadily kept going even when coming to a loop in the track which seemed impossible to get over. I made sure I made it over the dividing wall and let myself flip/fall over to the other side and kept going.

The added driver cam to in this game is rather novel and I really haven’t seen it used to good effect in any other game before or since. Watching “Die Anna” or “Max Damage” flail about when the car is in a spin or lurch forward when you hit head on is amusing and a good touch. Going over a big jump has them hollering/screaming with joy.

In my short time with it I wasn’t able to touch some of the depth to the game. There’s multiple cars you can get, car upgrades and a ranking system.

I’m surprised to say I might actually come back to this game. The first blood splattered pedestrian that flew at my camera made me think this game’s “90s XTREME” sensibilities had caused it to not age well. However, there’s something there that was truly worth playing.