Injecting a dose of excessive violence and foul language into the racing game genre helped the original Carmageddon stand out from the pack for its controversial nature alone. Many years later, this faithful iOS port still has a touch of shock value left in its gas tank, but the brutal racing and crass antics haven't aged very well.
Carmageddon's warped take on racing gives you three different ways to win. You can pass through checkpoints the old-fashioned way, annihilate all of your opponents by thrashing into them until they explode, or you can try to find and mow down all of the pedestrians on the course. No matter what route you take on the path to victory, there's a heavy emphasis on causing as much vehicular and bodily destruction as possible. This is where most of the amusement in this murderous romp comes from, since the racing itself isn't that enjoyable.
In fact, trying to race in a more traditional fashion seems pointless at times. Your opponents are constantly smashing into you, sending you flying out of control, and the first few cars handle so horribly that it's tough to even make the most simplest of turns without coming to a near full-stop. Unlocking new rides and boosting their stats helps things out to an extent, but it takes some serious patience to push that far.
Running down cows and pedestrians is messy business that adds a touch of campy humor to the action, however, not all of the shenanigans are as welcome. Your racer emits a near constant stream of obscenities when running into things or getting jostled around, which is pretty much the entire race. That might have been edgy and cool 15 years ago, but it comes off as unnecessarily juvenile and will definitely spoil the experience for some players.
The bottom line. Campy carnage makes for some fleeting fun, but the racing thrills don't last long out of the starting gates.
of 5
iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch running iOS 5.1 or later
Absurd vehicular slaughter. Lots of unlockable rides.
Crass language is pretty lame. Dated visuals. Sloppy racing.
chodaboy
October 29, 2012 at 5:28pm
Hmm... that was an exceptionally harsh review. Everything you criticized about the game is exactly why it is so awesome. It brings back such awesome OS 9 memories! It isn't about being innovative in this decade, but instead it's all about retro-awesomeness! I'm loving that all these classic games are out like Marathon and 7th Guest. I'm looking forward to Carmageddon 2 which is what I played on the Mac. Also want Gabriel Knight and all the Myst games.
Running over cows never gets old!
choiceweb
October 29, 2012 at 1:19pm
I believe a company is making a new version/translating the old game into something that will run on PCs and Macs.
Mr. Happypants
October 29, 2012 at 6:46pm
It's the exact same dev team that brought us the original doing it! They had a Kickstarter and it went absolutely nuts, I forget the planned release date, but they raised well over $500,000. Can't wait to see what they produce for the modern hardware, I'll be buying it Day 1 for sure.
Mr. Happypants
October 29, 2012 at 12:55pm
I grabbed this when it was Free last week & it's EXACTLY like I remember the original! Of course it's dated, it's an almost direct port from the first release and that makes it a riot. I even have the CD for the first one, but sadly it won't install on any newer version of OS X.
