The Fox ‘n’ Hounds game mode is a frustrating mess. Yes, you can only spend so many hours smashing lazy pedestrians and tumbling onto your roof for the umpteenth time before the game’s cheesy metal soundtrack gets drowned out by your tired sighs. But these offered short bursts of excitement, and they were dragged down by technical issues and, after a while, boredom. To my surprise, I stumbled into rare moments in which racing along as my opponents and I exchanged metal and flak was actually fun. The mode takes you on a tour of the maps in Carmageddon: Reincarnation, which are surprisingly large (leading to lengthy load times), providing long, winding races across beaches, through sea towns, under icy caverns, and past industrial complexes.Ĭlassic Carma is Reincarnation’s best form. Those points can also be used to purchase weapons or defensive boosts, which you can add to a set of hotkeys. Yellow barrels add a few more seconds to a countdown timer or some extra points. Red barrels provide weapons and items, including flying Acme-sized anvils, explosive mines, oil slicks, and springs that propel nearby opponents and pedestrians through the air or into walls. Colored oil drums that dot the map provide you with the means for victory. In Classic Carma, you can win in one of three ways: finish a race, kill all the pedestrians, or destroy every opponent. Ok, that was a trick statement: none of them are that good. Speaking of game modes, let’s go over which ones are good and which ones are bad. And because most of Reincarnation’s game types favor zippy cars over slow-moving trucks, it’s not likely that you’ll stay behind the wheel of one for long.Īt the slightest provocation, from bump to severed body part, vehicles spin out of control, making you fight to stay on the road. Large vehicles with large tires to match tend to have more stability on and off the road, but they lack the speed of the faster, sportier cars. Small ramps also hide untold danger because hitting them at the wrong angle will more often than not send you flipping through the air to land on your roof. Even a minimal increment, such as diving from road to sidewalk, can cause your car to wildly jerk to the side, or worse, flip end over end. Some of the heavier vehicles take to the road with the grace of a lobbed brick, but the majority control as though they’re being driven over greased ice.Īt the slightest provocation, from bump to severed body part, vehicles spin out of control, making you fight to stay on the road. You can unlock a large roster of vehicles-most will be familiar to longtime Carmageddon fans-and send them soaring through frightened crowds of cows and human pedestrians (or peds, as the game refers to them), but precious few are worth taking out for a drive. Carmageddon: Reincarnation, however, could have spent more time under a mechanic’s careful eye-a lot more time. You would expect a game entirely focused on vehicles, from racing to combat, to put the utmost care and effort into how well they handle. Well, buckle up.Ī host of serious performance issues and slippery controls ultimately leave enjoyment idling in the garage, choking on fumes.

The performance, however, would be at least somewhat bearable with vehicles that are fun to drive. Of course, you can lower your graphics settings to squeeze out more frames, but doing so offers no favors in a game that already looks aesthetically dull. But you won’t have to wait for long-the game crashes, freezes, and locks up your computer, forcing restarts. As cars and trucks get crushed, the game screeches to a halt, leaving you to ponder the game’s fragile state and wonder just when it will all fall apart. One map in particular, a small arena with a large metal saucer that periodically drops on any hapless vehicles below, is nearly unplayable.

The frame rate struggles to stay around 30, occasionally diving to create something akin to a Red Asphalt slide show at times, it sputters and chugs worse than a 1970s-era Chevy truck left to rot in the backyard. The game would be mediocre at best, but a host of serious performance issues and slippery controls ultimately leave enjoyment idling in the garage, choking on fumes.Ĭarmageddon: Reincarnation has many problems under the hood, but clunky performance is worst of all. Carmageddon: Reincarnation attempts to bring that game back to life, but it does little to improve on the old formula, and the result feels out of its time. You raced and killed your way to victory in one of many exaggerated vehicles, each of them strapped with rough blades, spikes, and other nasty parts, as you wrecked opponents and turned mobs of wandering pedestrians into chunks of flayed meat. It was one of those oft-declared “violent games of the ’90s,” featuring enough wanton carnage to attract the ire of hand-wringing parents, politicians, and censors.

Carmageddon, released in 1997, was a bloody and entertaining car combat racer for its time.

Carmageddon xbox one