How this game ever ended up being released remains a mystery.

User Rating: 2 | Carmageddon 64 N64
A personal account of one of the most abysmal games I have ever played

Everyone who has video gaming as hobby occasionally plays a game so appalling that they just turn it off and never play it again. I played such a game... and I kept playing.

That's true, I played a few hours of a game that was obviously broken and inferior in every aspect. It wasn't charming, it wasn't fun, nor was it in any way bearable. It was, however, fascinating to see how such an incredibly bad game was released on a video game console with Nintendo's seal of quality. The game I'm talking about is Carmageddon 64, which cloaked the gaming world in darkness in 2000.

I actually was a fan of the original Carmageddon, a rather unique game released for the PC in 1997. It was essentially a racing game, the difference with traditional racers being that the gameplay basically revolved around destroying the cars of your opponents until you were the only one left standing. Perhaps more importantly, you were able to delay the race's time limit and increase your points by hitting and killing as many pedestrians as possible. The concept of harvesting points by harvesting bodies sparked enormous amounts of controversy (mind that this game was released a few years before GTA 3), making it automatically interesting to kids such as myself, who had already tasted blood with such classic violent games as Duke Nukem 3D and the Mortal Kombat series. The gameplay, as far as I can remember it (it's been a few years), was actually quite decent, at least decent enough to keep me entertained for many, many hours.

So when it was announced that an all-new Carmageddon game was to be released for my beloved Nintendo 64, I was filled with joy. Even though it was obvious that the regular pedestrians were replaced by zombies on Nintendo's child friendly 64 bit machine, I looked forward to getting back into the drivers seat and pedal to the metal just as a fragile granny was about to cross the road for the last time in her life.

The shock that went through me when I first played the game, however, was unsurpassed. They managed to shatter every good connotation I had with the name 'Carmageddon', just like I had so joyfully shattered the bones of thousands of pedestrians before this mockery of the original game came out. It did just about everything wrong: the graphics actually looked worse than in the PC original, which wasn't a visual miracle to begin with, and the controls were so illogical that it practically made the game unplayable. Some games have a steep learning curve that you have to master before being able to play the game properly. Carmageddon 64, however, has a collection of bugs and glitches you need to learn to keep under control before you are able to play a race from start to finish. It truly makes me wonder what the use of Nintendo's seal of quality is, when even broken attempts at software such as this manage to make it to the store with a price tag on them, instead of a warning that you will regret every second you waste on this 'game'.

For me, Carmageddon 64 still stands as the most abysmal game I have ever played in my entire life. There are bound to be even more embarassing efforts (and I call them efforts because ruining a decent game's gameplay this much truely requires effort) than this, such as the legendary Big Rigs game, but I have seriously wondered how Carmageddon 64 managed to appear on an actual console, without anyone (the testers, Nintendo, or hell, the developers themselves) noticing that this isn't worth everyone's time or money.

What I want to tell you with this review, and the reason why I actually wrote this article so long after the game's release, is that, even if you attach very little value to video game reviews (such as me), you should really evaluate your decision some more if you are planning on buying a game that got under 30% on Gamerankings. You WILL regret it.

So what happened to my copy of the game? Well, it still lurks somewhere in the most hidden outcorners of my gaming archive, even though my brother literally wanted to throw it out of the window when he first (and last) played it. The only time I take it out is when I want to remind myself of the basic value of video game reviews. They are there to prevent you from spending money and time on something that just might traumatise you.


Report Card:

Graphics: 2/10
Just everything in this game looks terrible. The car design is the only thing that's slightly bearable, and the only thing that prevents me from giving a 1.

Sound: 3/10
I've erased it almost completely from my memory, which is not without reason.

Technique: 1/10
Broken, broken, broken. This game is so buggy and full of glitches that winning a race is an achievement in itself.

Lasting appeal: 2/10
I'm willing to admit that you can spend quite some time on gazing at the screen after you've discovered how bad it is. After that, the likelihood of you wanting to play it again is non-existent, unlike the memory that will haunt you whenever someone mentions Carmageddon.


Pros & Cons
- Abysmal graphics
- Incredibly bad controls
- No, really, incredibly bad
- It costs money and time
+ ...though only a few minutes if you do it right and realise that this game isn't worth your time