In the late 1990s, the arcade vehicular combat genre was at its peak. From games like Vigilante 8 to Road Rash to Twisted Metal, there were options available no matter the type of carnage you wanted to enact. One series that stood the most to many was Carmageddon, a sandbox-style racer that had you utilizing various weapons against your opponents and taking out pedestrians.
So, when developer 34BigThings announced Carmageddon: Rogue Shift, I was excited. A new Carmageddon game—a series I’ve enjoyed since my childhood—that was also set to take the series in a new direction in the form of a roguelike spinoff? It’s like a game was being made specifically to cater to me.
There’s just one big problem, the game isn’t all that fun.
That’s not to say there aren’t moments of fun to be had. The initial runs are fine and the races can provide a challenge, but there’s just not enough here to really keep you invested for more than a couple of hours.
Carmageddon: Rogue Shift Review
Whereas the Carmageddon games of old offered you a sandbox style experience, Rogue Shift ditches that for streamlined events along branching paths.
You can take part in events like death races and survival encounters, among others, with the ability to upgrade your loadout and weapons throughout.
As you play and either complete or fail runs, you have the ability to buy upgrades to help you on your next run. From new vehicles—more on that later—to how much ammo you get from an on-track pickup to new weapons to add, there’s a lot here to unlock. And earning the credits needed to make those purchases is actually pretty rewarding as you don’t need to grind too much to get to the next level of items.
The pedestrians are replaced by zombies, which you can run over for boost or shoot to cause damage to opponents. You’ll also have barrels scattered about that you can use to your advantage.
There are 15 vehicles to unlock and use, each having different pros and cons. On paper, it sounds good, but as you continue to play with each of the options available, you’ll find that they don’t really differ much. On the tracks, which have variety but, again, start to feel the same, there’s no feeling of weight to the cars. And one little push of the joystick to either side can have you spinning out on even the straightest of roads.
Explosive Combat
All the modes, vehicles, and upgrades available to you are nice, but what’s a Carmageddon game without taking out your opponents. And this is the best aspect of the game, by far.
Every race gives you the chance to wreck the other drivers either by running them off the road into obstacles, crashing right into them, or blowing them up with a weapon. You are allotted one weapon on your vehicle at the start that you can either upgrade or replace during your run. As you get deeper in the run, you’ll have the chance to add more to your car, increasing the destruction.
And there’s just something satisfying about watching the car you’ve been chasing down for three laps get blown right up from a rocket you shot. It’s just…**chef’s kiss**
MORE CARMAGEDDON: INTERVIEW—Carmageddon: Rogue Shift Game Director Giuseppe Franchi
But while the damage you cause is enjoyable, the AI doesn’t really strike fear during a race. They often seem more worried about the other drivers than you. And, for a lack of a better phrase, they’re also quite dumb.
No matter how far you are in a run, you’ll find the AI driving straight into Boomers and other traps without any effort to avoid. It feels like at any time, you’ll find yourself jumping from 5th to 2nd in an instant because your opponents don’t know how to swerve.
To be perfectly honest, I found most of my losses in a race caused by my own doing as opposed to anything the other drivers did.
Boss battles are also a mixed bag. While the races against tougher cars are fun, the battles against boss vehicles like Bullzerker get kind of boring and repetitive quite quickly. In the battles where you have a certain amount of time to destroy a boss, you’ll often find yourself having to slow down just so you don’t drive away from them. And, in many cases, it feels like the only true challenge is just how long it takes to actually destroy your opponent rather than the difficulty of the battle.
Carmageddon: Rogue Shift Review Verdict
Carmageddon: Rogue Shift tries, it really does. You can tell there’s a solid foundation here for a deep and fun game. The problem is that, more often than not, the game just isn’t that much fun to play and it doesn’t do much to stand out from a crowded roguelike market.
The races all start to blend after a while and little issues like the tediousness of selecting the next event, framerate drops, no real feel to the vehicles all start to add up. They say that the game’s runs are random, and while that’s technically true, they’re not random enough to keep you from feeling a sense of Déjà vu.
Are you going to pick up Carmageddon: Rogue Shift? Leave your thoughts down in the comments and in the official Insider Gaming Discord.
Carmageddon: Rogue Shift
5
Carmageddon: Rogue Shift
Mike has been covering the gaming industry since 2012, and has reported on some of the largest events in the industry while also working as an investigative reporter. Outside of…
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