Mini-Carmageddon

[davidn]

I am inexpressibly amazed that Carmageddon is now on the iPhone. It's a reminder for me of just how far computers have come in only the last fifteen years - a device that I carry around in my pocket now runs a full 3D game much more smoothly than my 486DX ever did. Not to mention the way that sensitivity decreases so much over time - this was a massively controversial game when it was released, with widely-publicized outcry (including from Greg Pope MP, which the makers absolutely leapt on by immediately giving out a press release titled "Pope speaks out against Carmageddon") - and now it can be released without anybody batting an eyelid.

This is part of the Carmageddon Reincarnation project, which also includes a new game to be released through Steam next year. This port of the original is being billed as "Carmageddon Funsize", but that name would seem to imply it's been cut down - I've been extraordinarily impressed at just how full-featured the game is on a device slightly smaller than the disc the original came on.

The entire game really is in here, spruced up a little in places like the interface to make it a bit bolder - and it runs at three times the resolution of the original. I was unsure how well the controls would work on a touchscreen at first, but I found myself getting used to them quickly - it sort of helps that even on the PC the controls were nigh-on undriveable (and I mean this in the nicest possible way... everything always felt very heavy), so you never feel like you're losing any precision.

The premise is still exactly the same - a cycle of "here's a race, now do what you like and don't follow the course if something else takes your fancy" - and you're free to run around smashing into things or running over the rather Mortal Kombat-styled pedestrians. Interestingly, there are now little highlighted tokens on the race list so that you have the incentive to complete the levels in all three ways - by actually doing the race (if you're dull), by destroying all opponents (if you're aggressive), or running over all the pedestrians (if you're mad).

I appreciated all sorts of little touches like that - the "stealing" concept of unlocking cars is now explained in the game to the point where it almost actually makes sense, and water handling is far less annoying than it used to be. Other little differences I noticed is that I think the game's gravity has been increased a little so that it's a bit less lunar, and that OK Stimpson has conspicuously been renamed to Juicy Jones. Throughout the experience, it's just really nice to be able to feel just by playing it that the developers of this port really cared about what they were doing, and finding a Solid Granite Car powerup (which increases your mass by a factor of fifty) feels as great as it always did.

And the thing I really couldn't believe - the action replay mode has survived! At any time, you can swipe the screen to the left and then rewind, step through and replay any particularly good moments of madness you've caused. They've also taken advantage of the invention of Youtube with a direct link to your account - you can see me demonstrating that even the rubbish powerdowns like Bouncy Bouncy sometimes get you out of trouble here, and what always happened when you fell down the mineshaft with Pinball Mode (which is rather more crude than I had originally intended as I was playing without sound and hadn't realized that the voice samples stay in the video). I was very fortunate to land on the Instant Repair after completely destroying every part of my car - and then again when a man in a hazard suit obligingly ran straight under me.

Comments

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

That second video is massively confusing and somehow kind of amazing despite it. XD Also I am completely charmed by amateurish enthusiasm of the voice samples :)

I wonder if the physics just seem less lunar because the frame rate is better..? (It still seems pretty damn floaty to me!)

[davidn]

It's possible about the gravity... though the underwater physics have definitely changed. It also may be the case that I'm remembering how it is at the end of the game when you've got all the upgrades, can reach a million miles an hour and hit a ramp and go pinging away out of the map.

The voice samples do have a very... incongruent feel to them, here :) Another thing I loved earlier this year was when they released some of the footage for filming the drivers, and it's not a studio effort at all - just them rounding up some people they know and filming them in front of the whitest wall that they could find.

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

Hahah, the bird on the helmet looks like it's made of electrical tape.... Must have been such an exciting time, when games were just starting to come into their own, and these people were feeling like they could make the kind of culture they grew up with by bringing their friends together...

[kjorteo]

On the subject of our delicate moral sensibilities marching on as time progresses ... I've seen footage from Thrill Kill--you know, that cancelled PSX fighting game that was so infamously sick and violent and everything that cancellation was basically its only option, because no one carries or markets or supports AO-rated games, etc. You know, the Night Trap of its day. Since the game was actually more or less finished before the controversy finally killed it, beta gameplay footage is freely available on YouTube for anyone from searches for it. It would probably still get an M were it to come out today, but it's still laughably tame compared to, say, Mortal Kombat 9.

[davidn]

Yes, I do remember seeing screenshots of that in the PS magazine before it was quietly dropped - if there's anything this deserved to be banned for in hindsight it's just its sort of relentless tattiness. I don't really see the appeal in the violence or the, er, "soundtrack", but the PS was short of four-player fighting games.

[kjorteo]

It's clearly a "LOOK AT ME I'M SO BLOODY AND VIOLENT AHAHAHA GUTS AND GORE AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA" effort first, and an actual playable game second. Then again, that sort of trying-too-hard-to-be-edgy nature is also my exact same complaint about legitimate released games like Mortal Kombat 9, Duke Nukem Forever, and even back to things like Madworld, etc. Basically, show me an M-rated game, and I will show you game that "Mature" is the absolute last word I would ever use to describe.

[davidn]

Agh... Dr. Murderbeaks has uses even outside the context of the game! D:

Yes, it is something of a bad classification name - I've said before that Albion is the only game I can name that really is rather mature about its subject matter, but that's sex rather than violence. Blood never really bothered me in games when I was young, though I don't think I really saw the appeal in it even then and was perfectly happy with the zombie/robot versions of Carmageddon... although now that I think about it I got a top grade in my secondary school English writing exam by writing a massive rant about the classification of 18-rated games due to arbitrary criteria of violence (especially simple blood colour).

I think I am becoming more sensitive to it, though - it was sort of a shock to remember that you could chainsaw people's heads off in Unreal Tournament, when coming back to it after a long time. Someone at my last job was very surprised when I made a post about Quake Live - most of it is so completely fantastical that I don't care about it, but particular things bother me for reasons I can't explain.

If there's something that bothers me in the iPhone version of Carmageddon, it's just that I can't help but feel that the setting... doesn't really make sense - why would I want to run people over? Zombies and robots - they provide a fictional target!

[kjorteo]

I can name either of the original tactical RPGs--Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre--as games I would call "mature" in all senses of the word, and that's because of clever and weighty writing in a fairly dark setting on both counts. Basically, both are about war-torn hellhole excuses for countries dealing with class-based oppression and nakedly ambitious aristocrats trying to out-backstab one another (often literally) to ascend to the top of it all. For some reason, the political intrigue really speaks to me, and there's ... quite an impressive body count along the way.

This is a scene from FFT I've always loved--to set the stage, you (Ramza and friends) have been fighting against this insurrection/rebellion called the Death Corps, and winning to the point where they're out of money and desperate. A random underling, Gustav, kidnaps a high-ranking Marquis to try to get a ransom, because they really need the money. Their leader, a total idealist named Wiegraf, is extremely unhappy about this. Your group runs off to find Gustav and the Marquis at the same time Wiegraf does, and then this scene happens. I love the argument in the beginning--you can really see both sides of it, given their circumstances.

[davidn]

Oh, wow - even given that introduction, I was... not expecting a sprite to do that to another sprite! Especially given how... completely anonymous all damage I've seen in all Final Fantasy games is otherwise.

[lupineangel.livejournal.com]

I've not played FF Tactics, but... this guy calls his group the Death Corps, yet considers kidnapping utterly taboo? Killing is fine, but demanding ransom money is for gutterpunk theives, not The Glorious Revolution?

D.F.

[kjorteo]

At this point in the story, the Death Corps is a group consisting primarily of disenfranchised knights who put on a Glorious People's Revolution after getting screwed out of getting paid for the last war they were in, and Wiegraf is an idealist who seemingly would rather lose with honor than do what it takes to get by (which causes a lot of friction with other members, as you can see.)

In hindsight, he probably could have chosen a better name, yes.

[xaq.livejournal.com]

Apparently Square thought that was a nicer translation of the group's name than "Corpse Brigade."

[crassadon.livejournal.com]

I do think any game with a playable character who wields a severed limb as a weapon, is pretty. . .shocking.


On another note, I don't recall any of those voice over sound effects being in the original Carmaggedon. They seem like the most mature part of the game, to me :/

[davidn]

I think you only get them if the Pratcam is turned on - something that I always turned off when I played it on the computer, because it gained me a precious couple of frames per second.

[kjorteo]

Is it ... seriously called the Pratcam? I guess that would explain a few things.

[davidn]

Carmageddon exudes the feeling of not so much being planned as being a sort of side effect of locking a group of highly dangerous people in an office - just about everything has a bizarre in-jokey name, like Jelly Suspension, the Opponent Repulsificator, or a speed boost called Turbo Nutter Bastard Nitrous. Strangely, this didn't lead to it becoming scary to me in the same way as Mortal Kombat, which has a similar erratic behaviour due to not really having a clear definition between the borders of the joke and the game.