Clutch

"Mum can i get carmageddon?" "No sweetie we have carmageddon at home"

God, this held up well. Essentially you race a car, which can be kitted out with all sorts of hazardously sharp bumpers, and mow down zombies and, quite frequently, your fellow human competitors. Clutch apparently has a plot that explains how such a scenario has come to pass, but it's a plot that doesn't bear any scrutiny. What matters is that the graphics still look damn sharp for a game from 2009 and the vehicle handling and physics are also solid, in spite of its age. There's a reasonable variety of vehicles with multiple skins, and upgrades that alter performance and visuals, and there's also a good variety of event types which are all set in the same open-world map, either as areas or as check-pointed routes. If I had one criticism, it's that that open-world map starts to get repetitive after a while; it's understandably the result of the game being as old as it is, but there's little aesthetic variety between "different" areas of the map, all of which are coloured in that grey/brown palette synonymous with that era. It's definitely fun and, if you used to play these games in the past, it's one that's survived the test of time.

Carmageddon from Temu

Racing and Reaping is what Bullitt would have been like if Steve McQueen had been stupid. This game wants to be Carmageddon so bad it can taste it. Not really worth it unless it's an extra pick just to fill out a "Get 5 games for $x" bundle (which is how I got it).

At the time it was released, one could say that Clutch ( also known as Armageddon Riders ) was a spiritual successor to the Carmageddon series, since they didn't make a new game for almost a decade. It's a combat racing game where you can run over zombies on the streets and destroy other cars as well. Despite being a combat racing game I found the story interesting - the protagonist gets a phone call from his employer whose car engine died and wants his help to get it back. Sounds simple, until he realizes that the citizens are now zombies and two groups of drivers have turned the whole city into a bloody arena. He decides to join in the fun and go on a driving rampage, but loses his sanity during the process. At some point he joins a religious group to find peace, but eventually feels betrayed, so he decides to put an end to it all with the help of a scientist in the collider ( some kind of lab ). I enjoyed the gameplay, but mostly prefer to play this game with a wheel. It is by no means a simulator but something with the handling on the controller feels off, so I decided to play with wheel ( got it set up with the help of X360ce ). Just like in most games with vehicular comb…

I haven't played this in 10 years...and forgot the name, was always curious what it was or when i could experience this again...