Has the absence of more Carmageddon games left you feeling empty inside? Targem's title will easily fill that emptiness.
That is the basic run down provided by everyone regarding the PSN download Armageddon Riders from Targem Games. This game is a fantastic resurrection of the Carmageddon genre. You remember Carmageddon, right? "The Racing Game For The Chemically Imbalanced"? Well, you can find info on those games on this site at your leisure. This game got its claws into me particularly deep. I was a fan of the first two Carmageddon games and have always held on to hope that somewhere, someone would carry the torch of this genre. And so, it has come to pass. Targem games has done the late Interplay and its deceased franchise adequate justice with this title.
The game lays itself out like Burnout Paradise or Test Drive Unlimited, dropping the player in the destroyed city to wander and discover in an automotive sandbox. Unlocked main and side missions are added to the map and a handy compass gives you directions to whichever mission marker you select. More missions are unlocked as you complete them and added to the map. In addition, completed main missions can be replayed through a "mission select" node which allows you to redo any completed main missions. In the sandbox city there are collectible items to be found, zombies to squash, and items you can unlock for your vehicle. The vehicle items are merely extra paint schemes for your car (called "skins") which are gained when you track down your doppelganger, marked for your convenience, and destroy him. You can do this over and over until all of the extra skins are unlocked.
Vehicle customization may not have all of the depth of some of the mainstream car games, but you can, through successful completion of main missions, unlock new grilles, body kits, "shockers", and boosters. There aren't too many options for each category but the choices which are available are functional and serve their purposes well.
Grilles are divided into two categories: anti-personnel types which are most effective against zombies and give you extra nitro for boosting and anti-vehicle types which increase the damage you do when you crash into your rivals. Some of the grilles are truly functional. Some vehicles have an anti-personnel type grille that looks like a hideous wood chipper. When you hit a zombie with this grille it actually pulls them in, grinds them up, and ejects the gore through ports in the sides. There's something satisfying about watching a zombie leaning up over the nose of your car, pounding on the hood, screaming as he gets pulled into the grinding teeth of your front end.
Body kits are not what you expect. In games like Need for Speed Underground, Gran Turismo, or Forza Motorsport a body kit is a decorative and aerodynamic enhancement. In Armageddon Riders a body kit is a vicious piece of equipment installed on either side of your car used to eliminate zombies should you fail to hit them directly. Some are blades and some aren't.
The "shocker" is a nice feature. Some of the zombies are incredibly fast and will jump on your car and pound it, potentially killing you. By shaking the controller up and down it activates "the shocker" and promptly removes any and all zombies from your vehicle. Yes, it uses the Six Axis feature. It's a bit of a pain, but it's not too bad for me to complain or detract any points for it.
The boosters are self-explanatory. For running over zombies and grabbing certain pick-ups in the city you build up an energy reserve which can then be used for boost. The boosters determine how much your speed increases and, in some cases, the rate at which your energy reserve is consumed.
The graphics aren't going to win any awards, but since this is a $9.99 download from a small studio it's obviously not going to be built on a multi-million dollar engine. However, the little touches Targem works in are what make it truly endearing. Smashing through a group of zombies at high speed sends body parts flying everywhere. Some of these will splatter on the camera, definitely not enough to obstruct your view but enough to notice. If you don't pick up repairs too often the front of your car becomes caked in gore from the legions of walking dead you've slaughtered. It even extends to the wheels and tires. The vehicle damage is a nice touch, too. The doors and hood buckle and fall off, paint peels, and engines catch fire.
The sound is a double-edged sword. The sounds of blood, guts, and body parts slopping off your car as you mow down wave after wave of zombies make exquisite splattering sounds as they hit, the moans and groans of the hordes of living dead will ring eerily in your ears, and the sounds of them screaming in pain make running them over all the more satisfying. However, the musical score is not all that great. It's a mixture of country and techno...it doesn't work well, at all. However, in keeping with this game providing excellent things for players, you can play music from your PS3 console instead of the game's soundtrack. This is an excellent, and sadly extremely rare, feature. I actually wish Burnout Paradise had had this feature instead of locking out music playback entirely.
The physics may not be something that will shake up the industry, but they are rock solid and do nothing but help you enjoy the experience. The sporty, quick cars handle well, drifting and taking turns with easily with the aid of proper braking. Then the heavy hitters function more like tanks, heavy and clunky but not all-together uncontrollable. One of my complaints with the first two Carmageddon games was that the cars handled so ridiculously poorly that it became a major flaw in the game. Then the third game had excellent physics and the rest of the game was awful. This game is a fine balance with excellent physics and agreeable missions.
Underneath all of this is a sense of dark humor similar to that of the Carmageddon franchise. You can find a Dance Madness power-up which spawns a group of zombies nearby all doing something resembling the "Thriller" dance. If you can find them and then plow through all of them before the timer expires you are rewarded a nice cash bonus. This humor may not be as prevalent as it was in the Carmageddon series, but the slightly subdued use of it helps it stay fresh.
Over-all, as a long time fan of the Carmageddon games who waited for someone else to try and enter this genre, I have done nothing but enjoy this game. I feel it was well worth the $9.99 they're asking. For those of you looking for a demolition racer with blood and guts then I urge you to check out this game. If you were a fellow fan of the Carmageddon games and are hoping this game will fill that void you didn't know you had then you shan't be disappointed. It wears the cap and bells of those games better than even the third Carmageddon game did, but with much-improved handling physics.