Motor Mayhem Hands-On

Motor Mayhem will be the first bona fide car-combat game for the PS2 system, and Infogrames is hoping it'll make a suitable splash. We've been playing with a nearly complete build of the game, and it's safe to say that it's made some definite progress since the last time we saw it, about two months ago.

As far as car-combat games go, Motor Mayhem's premise is almost inventive. The game is set in a postapocalyptic world where intense demolition derbies are the preferred mode of diversion. The Vehicular Combat League--or VCL for short--is the premier association of automotive gladiators, and its ranks are composed of mutants, cyborgs, and even a handful of regular humans. Its productions are similar in tone to large-scale pro-wrestling matches: Its members have attitude, and its battles occur largely in the context of a spectator sport.

This current build features eight playable characters and their respective vehicles: the fiery Volcana and her flamethrowing tank; the cyborg Corvalis and his speedy jetbike; Grok, the rock man, and his strange steamroller; the human warrior Orion and his battle sled; the steely Chromium and her fully armed sports car; the demonesque Incubus and his horned bike; Rancor, the lizard mutant, and his torpedolike ride; and finally, Void, the enigmatic wraith, and his infernal hearse. As you'd expect, each character-vehicle combo has its own respective strength and weakness. Grok's and Orion's vehicles are heavy and hard-hitting but also rather slow, while Incubus' and Corvalis' bikes are swift and maneuverable, yet comparatively frail. The selection of characters seems diverse enough to cater to players of all inclinations, however, and they all seem relatively well balanced.

More so than any previous car-combat game, Motor Mayhem is very character driven. Firstly, all the character models are immediately visible during matches. They'll respond to the action onscreen, and many of their special attacks are accompanied by appropriate animations. This lends the game a much more tangible personality than previous installments in the genre. The characters look great in terms of design, and it's obvious that Beyond put great effort not only into their conceptions but also into their graphical execution. Luckily, none of these graphical bells and whistles detract from the game's tight mechanics in any way.

Motor Mayhem's battles are fast paced, explosive, and consistently engaging. The game's default control scheme is rather simple: The left analog stick controls both steering and acceleration, and most of the weapon functions are mapped to the shoulder buttons. The face buttons control your brakes and your boost, and--in tandem with the L1 button--they're also used to execute the characters' many combos. You fire your standard machine gun with the R1 button and your special pickup weapons with R2. As mentioned before, the L1 button is the key to the characters' special attacks. Executing them requires simple button combos that you enter while you're holding down the L1 button, with the specifics varying for each individual character. Their effects, however, are usually very impressive. One of Rancor's combos, for instance, causes him to emit splashes of corrosive acid in a large circular area. Anyone unfortunate enough to be caught in the area will suffer a good deal of damage. Void's graviton mine is also impressive: When released, it attracts your enemies' vehicles like a black hole and severely damages them when they come into contact with it. Each character has a handful of such combos at his or her disposal, and this is where Motor Mayhem easily draws most of its depth. In any case, use of the special attacks is regulated by your energy meter, which sits alongside your health bar and gradually fills as you zoom through the arenas. Boosting, however, on top of special attacks, will also cause it to rapidly deplete. It replenishes rather quickly, though, so you'll seldom want for power.

You'll also have a host of pickup weapons at your disposal, whose effects range in power and versatility. You'll find everything from powerful, railgunlike gauss cannons to hordes of cluster bombs scattered all throughout the courses. As you'd expect, the more powerful weapons are tucked away pretty well, usually in more remote parts of the arenas--mininukes, after all, can't be too readily available.

Motor Mayhem's arenas are also very exciting. This current build has 12 arenas available, and they're all suitably different in terms of aesthetics and physical design. These battlegrounds are very animate and, like the game's vehicles, are capable of a great deal of real-time deformation. You can assume that any obstacle you see is destructible, and, what's more, each arena is capable of one major deformation that will greatly affect its layout. The VCL arena map, for instance, features an enormous jumbotron that, when pelted with enough shellfire, will eventually collapse and occupy the center of the battlefield. Needless to say, this adds a good deal of excitement to the proceedings; the arenas are constantly in flux, and when coupled with the dizzying carnage going on at any given moment, it serves to make the action just that more frenetic. Many of the arenas are also multileveled. Those that are multileveled feature some interesting means by which to access the higher planes--FPS-style jump pads, vacuum tubes, and boost surfaces being immediate examples.

Graphically, Motor Mayhem is looking superb. The characters and vehicles are very nicely animated, and none of their motions seem canned. The actual vehicles will display damage as they take beatings, emitting smoke, dropping fenders, and catching fire, where appropriate. The texture quality is sharp, and the game, as promised, moves at a more or less consistent 60fps. Multiplayer matches will see this figure drop--sometimes significantly--but this is to be expected. When we saw the alpha version of the game a few months back, we honestly had our doubts about the game's ultimate visual destiny, but playing this new build has made us firm believers.

All in all, Motor Mayhem is shaping up quite nicely. The controls are a bit touchy at this point, especially with the lighter vehicles. The physics are also a bit floaty, but this probably isn't a bad thing--it lends a sort of high-flying element to the battles, which is actually positive, in some of the arenas. With Twisted Metal Black on the horizon, however, it looks like its position won't be as cushy as Infogrames would like. Still, the game should hit store shelves sometime before Sony's car-combat game, so at the very least, it will set the tone for what is sure to be a good year for fans of car fighting. Motor Mayhem is set to ship in near the end of May.