E3 2002Totaled! impressions

At E3 today we tried out a prerelease version of Majesco and Rage Software's new demolition driver, Totaled! Formerly known as Crash, Totaled! is a simple driving game with only one real objective: smash the hell out of your opponent before he does the same to you. You can accomplish this easily by pointing your car at the other guy and hitting the gas hard. That's really all there is to the game, but for what it is, Totaled! seems to work pretty well.

The match we played was actually a football field with a ramp set up in front of each goal post. You can score points by ramming and damaging the other cars, and at the end of the timed match, whoever has the most points wins. Cars can also be eliminated entirely if you bang them up real good. In the particular level we tried, points could also be scored by jumping the ramp and effectively scoring a field goal with your car. Pretty simple stuff, really, but entertaining nonetheless.

As in many Xbox games, the graphics in Totaled! really shine. The cars themselves are very detailed, with nice reflection mapping and highlights, and they really show damage too, which should please racing fans who are tired of years of racing games with indestructible cars. The vehicles in Totaled! get smashed from every angle, their hoods pop up, and the doors fly open and bang around in the breeze--it's pretty comical to watch, really. The frame rate is very smooth, and the control is tight, making Totaled! a good deal of fun to play, even if it's not very deep. Of course, the final game will have more gameplay modes than the simple deathmatch-style game we got to try, and this should keep would-be demolition derby drivers satisfied for some time to come. Look for Totaled! to hit shelves sometime in June.