Set in 2050, the world is... well, it’s completely buggered, quite frankly. Set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland – natch – your character enters the ‘Carmageddon’ in a bid to win their freedom. The narrative is handled by graphic novel-esque cutscenes and adds to the larger-than-life feel of the whole setup and are brisk in their approach to allow players to get a quick understanding of the basic premise before getting into the meat of the game proper, the violent racing.
Carmageddon Rogue Shift very much lives up to its title by being a rogue-lite title, this means you won’t be finishing the game on your first try, instead you’ll unlock permanent upgrades and options such as other cars, weapons, boosts, bonuses, and myriad other things to make your future runs go that little bit smoother.
Whilst the main focus is usually finishing first in each race, there are boss encounters and other types of races such as ones where the on-track enforcers try to take you down, meaning you must avoid taking as much damage as possible whilst trying to complete the race, these are all variations on a theme, but the fact that you carry car damage over to the next race combined with the fact that you often have to choose forking paths that can scupper your plans – do you want to see if you can head into that next race with 30% health but an upgraded weapon, if you have the cash for it!? Or would you rather eschew upgrades, get fully healed, but go into a boss fight with a dodgy machine gun? – means that there is real tension in each encounter.
The car handling and combat mechanics are also on point here, with the vehicles genuinely handling very uniquely, the heavier trucks will mean that you can smash through cars and take an incredible amount of damage, but mark my words, that lack of top speed means that you will be constantly wrecking other racers (which respawn, by the way) in order to keep ahead of the pack.
Naturally, you could go the other way; with a nifty little drifter….that means you will be booming along in the lead most of the time…but how the hell are you going to take those bosses down without some serious armour on you? The game makes a lot of space for customisation in terms of the upgrade system – which also has some double-edged entries as well – and so this means you can bounce between setups and arrays in order to get that one good run.
The races - whilst all taking place in miserable, rain-soaked post-apocalyptic landscapes – feel quite unique, with most having a specific trait that you’ll need get to grips with the more you race, with three of the most memorable ones for me being the circular lap around thick metal pipes that you have to avoid in a short and quite crash-laden burst of violence, the wrecking yard that features concrete-covered wrecking balls swinging wildly around the track, and a track that features a cave system with rocky outcrops as an incredibly dangerous hazard that can bring your car to a grinding halt.
Speaking of hazards, this incarnation of Carmageddon has ‘The Wasted’, which are mutant, zombie-like creatures milling around the races that can give you some extra boost if you run them over, splattering them across the tarmac and ruined buildings, but also have some different types that can slow your car, or explode and knock you completely off-line, making you waste precious seconds getting back on track. All of this is backed up by a suitably sludgy soundtrack, it’s not my cup of tea personally, but you can’t argue that crushing, down-tuned guitar riffs and pounding drums don’t match the action on screen.
The controls are responsive, but I did find one decision a bit of a strange one – the game has a ‘bash’ feature, whereby you can shunt other cars and take off a fair bit of damage in doing so, but the shunts are mapped to L1/R1, which means you have to use your index finger on the R2 button to accelerate, so you don’t have to slow down in order to shunt, which you’ll be doing pretty regularly. I couldn’t help but feel that the shunts should have been mapped to the right thumb-stick, so you could have just done a quick flick with your thumb, so you could enjoy a more natural position on the controller.
As much as I enjoyed my time with Carmageddon Rogue Shift and I applaud the decision to streamline the formula – the lack of any sort of multiplayer is a real shame, and also, whilst Max Damage’s iconic car is a main feature, the lack of a goofy parade of the previous characters and cars in this new, more grim-faced iteration does strip the game of a lot of its historical identity, feeling a little generic ‘blood ‘n metal’ with a lack of humour in the game.
That said, it all boils down to a very playable single player experience, with all the heft and weight you’d expect from a racing game in this genre, which I’m completely on board with.
7.5/10
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