@~Fancy a change from adventuring? Why not try ...

                    Carmageddon II

             Wasted by Andrew Wielochowski

You bolt the doors, check the armour plating and fix the
offensive.  Around you the sound of car engines rises to a squeal.
Through your armour plated window you gaze up at the the bright
sky and the deer frolicking on the gently rolling hills. You
glance across at the drivers of the cars. Ed gives you a hoot of
his horn. A grimace spreads across your face. In the blue sky the
birds twist and wheel and the hundreds of spectators all move
quickly to the edge of the road: the count down has commenced. 5,
the engines on, 4, you rev it up, 3, you ram your foot down on the
accelerator, but keep the brake down, 2, You feel the tension and
the exhilaration of the race which is about to commence. 1, your
foot comes off the pedal - wheels spinning and GO! The wheels grip
and in moments the other cars are barely visible... but gaining.
You execute a power-turn and in doing so crush a zombie deer
against the cliff face. You ram down on the accelerator and speed
back towards the oncoming racers. As go, you line your wheels up
with rows of brainless zombies and spread green ooze all over the
road. Ed is now on a collision course. So you try to go faster
then you hit him head on. The bumper scatters off into side and
your wind shield cracks and shatters as the hood of the car
crumples up and Ed's car is left a smoking wreck. The Race has
begun ... there are no rules.

                     DRIVE TO SURVIVE

Carmageddon first came on the scene back in April 1997 and to
SynTax with James' excellent review. With its release it caused
lots of problems as the demos and some releases involved running
over pedestrians with red blood. But after many complaints SCI
were forced to change this. So they had less realistic zombies
with green blood.  The philosophy being you can't kill something
that is dead you can just smear it across the road. Later saw the
release of the Splat Pack, an add-on and this time with blood. So
you could now play Carmageddon in all its glory.

Carmageddon II has suffered the same curse that befell Carmageddon
1.  In exactly the same way you gotta run over zombie sheep,
deer, people, penguins, dogs, elephants --- the list goes on.

Firstly if you are new to Carmageddon and haven't played it or
read James' review then this is the basics of it; you have your
own little car like in all racing games and the object of the game
is to complete the track !SHOCK! But you can do this in 4 ways:

(1) By killing off all the pedestrians in the level. This is done
by running over them or zapping them with electricity and with
many other nasty weapons.

(2) By wasting and trashing all your opponents so there is no-one
else to race against.

(3) By racing around the track, going through all the checkpoints
and doing the required number of laps.

(4) By cheating.

Now you can see how it differs from Sega Rally, Screamer and all
the other jolly little racing games. Carmageddon is also entirely
unrestricted: you can go wherever you want in the level and it
whatever direction without the "WRONG WAY" slogans. :) You can
race around many different levels and get different cars as you
pass the right ranks and trash people. Well that's Carmageddon 1
and the basics of Carmageddon 2.

So what is new with Carmageddon II.

Well no longer do you have to buy armour, power and offensive from
a parts shop. Yes you can upgrade as you go along. And no longer
do those cars come free, you gotta hand over your hard earned cash
for them. And after every three races you are now greeted with a
mission with a set and unalterable time limit. That mission could
mean you have to waste zombies, trash trucks:), or destroy
satellites. You cannot get to the next set of levels without
completing that mission.

There is also a new range of zoo and domestic animals for you to
smear and the power-ups are new and even more entertaining ...
flame-thrower, gulp! All the zombies are made of polygons so that
you can now scrape them and let legless zombies wander or try to
wander the level.

However Carmageddon II will not have the same effect on players
than Carmageddon did. This I believe is because it is no longer
top notch graphics but mainly it does not come even slightly near
the atmosphere that you got in Carmageddon. There is no or very
little atmosphere about Carmageddon II.

You can download a patch to make it into the blood version but it
is 13 Meg. Choice is yours. Or you can now buy a series of patches
for œ4 or so. They include: alien patch, blood patch, robot patch,
zombie patch and screensaver.

Finally my Physics teacher was telling me how he reckons the game
is based on "Death Race 2000". This is what he said about it,
roughly. "Death Race 2000 is set in the future when all these
races take places in cities, the country and the government
sponsor it. The drivers then drive around running over pedestrians
and trashing opponents. There are different points for each type
of pedestrian. The old aged are given the high points. During one
part a bunch of men who want the star of the film to win go into a
hospital and wheel out all the old people and place them in a
line in the ambulance car park so that the driver can race down
the car park and get them all in one straight line. So you see all
these old people going flying. Not really gruesome, but the way
its done makes it looking actually quite amusing."

Despite it being fun, there are other games I'd prefer to play:
Carmageddon, Half-life and the KING ... Thief: The Dark Project.

End points: Get a machine about P200, 32Mb with Voodoo card.  Then
it should be OK.


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