As a vintage gamer who has played and loved quite a lot of combat racing titles over the years, while it was never the best option out there, Carmageddon still holds a spot in my heart for daring to do things its own way. I’ll admit that given the fact that it didn’t just include brutal driving action, but also features like running over innocent civilians, I was surprised to hear someone was going to make a new one. I knew it was inevitable changes would need to be made, and I was fine with that. Unfortunately, even outside the general neutering of the series’ rough edges, there’s no question that a lot of the excitement and fun in this new incarnation was lost along the way as well.

Starting with what works, I think it was smart to apply a roguelike mentality to the series. Having you work through a progression of different events, picking up different weapons and upgrades along the way that won’t always be guaranteed, does help keep things a little more fresh. The fact that there’s a reasonable number of vehicles to unlock as you go, each from 3 pretty distinctive classes that play differently, is also a smart move. If you’d prefer to be more nimble but vulnerable, a tank who isn’t great in turns but can brutalize enemies, or something somewhere in the middle, the game pretty quickly will have you covered. Throw in a variety of boss races, each featuring a much tougher vehicle that will require a little more work to take out, and on paper the elements of what could be a successful franchise reboot are present.

Unfortunately, where the splattered entrails and rubber hit the road, too many aspects of the game’s execution are simply not up to the challenge. The first and most noticeable problem I have is the sensation while playing the game and being in the thick of things just isn’t very exciting. I can respect the need to move from pedestrians to roving zombies, but plowing through them brings nothing to the table. There’s just a lack of a visceral feel to making contact, meaning you could just as easily have been running through power-up icons. One part of that problem is that there’s a general lack of a feeling of speed on a general level. Whether you’re at top speed or just trying to get moving, there’s simply not that big a difference in how the game feels. The rampant rubberbanding of enemies you’ve wiped out, simply then blowing back by you randomly shortly after does nothing to help with this. Though since the AI often feels inept at driving that will at least usually keep you in the race, and I suppose there’s a balance to that, it’s just not very satisfying.

Aside from issues with the sense of speed lacking, there’s no question that the controls are a bit of a mess as well. While the more nimble vehicles at least don’t make it feel like you’re trying to turn in a school bus, there are just random times when you’re trying to make a turn that the game seems to be determined to be of no help at all, whether trying to let up off the gas, drift, or use the brakes carefully. Especially when I reflect on how great a game like Wreckfest pulled off solid racing controls, and a terrific sense of the impact of collisions and how your car would react to those, this comes up incredibly short of that mark. Considering the fact that this should be a racer built on a foundation of satisfying vehicular destruction and carnage, the fact that it instead just fails to deliver any solid thrills, this sadly ends up being pretty disappointing.