Hi everyone. So occasionally I have to review a game
and I feel torn about
the best way to go about explaining it to you. No more is that true for
Carmageddon
Reincarnation. Now just to give you a little bit of background here
I have known the guys at Stainless Software for a fair
number I've years. I reviewed their original Carmageddon release and was shown it
behind closed doors at ECTS 1997 or something.
So I have a long history with this franchise.
Now the guys at Stainless were very kind to give me a free copy of Carmageddon Reincarnation
right the way back when they were in their early access and
we've been following development of the game for well, the last year really.
Now you might remember when
the beta was released I made a number of comments as to where I thought this game
was going to end up sitting
and in some respects I was warning the developers not
to go down this route. Unfortunately what they delivered
pretty much just says everything that I was saying
in the beta. This game is not very well
optimised or should I say less not well optimised as in
badly designed. One of the biggest problems this game has
is the frame rate and there's no way to get away from this - the frame rate is
trash.
The gameplay is phenomenal, the graphics
are substandard and so what we have is a game that is quite confusing in some
respects and in my opinion needed another six months at least.
Here's the issue. At the end of the day the very first level you play
in Carmageddon Reincarnation is the city level where
the frame rate averages under 40 frames a second. You might see 45 if you're lucky
coming round
some of the less intense corners as it were there's not as many pedestrians
but the strange thing is that as you progress through the game some of the
levels
actually have pretty good frame rates, 55 and above,
occasionally even hitting 60. Now bearing mind this is on a 770 GPU from Nvidia
with a core i7 4790
CPU and 16 gig of ram this is no slouch. This plays GTA 5
beautifully at 60 frames a second. It plays Wolfenstein beautifully at 60 frames a
second.
It plays The Witcher at about 45 frames a second. There we go. But my point is
really that
it seems that when the developers have put this game together it doesn't make
sense. Why put the worst-performing level right at the beginning giving the
worst possible impression of what the game is capable of.
It doesn't really make a lot of sense. Now this is a game that is highly
complex
in its engine characteristics. When we look at the cars and the damage modelling that
we have there
it is pretty stunning. When we kind of look at body parts flying off the
pedestrians and so on
it's pretty impressive but then everything else just falls apart around it.
It hasn't created a fluid gaming experience at
pretty much any graphics card on the market apart from Titans by the look of it.
That and obviously the 980 high end GPUs.
It just doesn't provide that smooth gameplay that you need from a racer.
As far as I'm concerned. if you're playing a racing game that's not delivering 60
frames a second on PC
do not release it and ultimately this is a racing game.
All right, there's also the wrecking mechanics and all the other aspects there but
ultimately this is about cars on tracks
with stuff to race against and avoid and destroy and all of that and so that 60
frames per second sweet spot on PC
you've got to be able to do that on at least mid-range hardware, in my personal
opinion. But what we're talking about here is
all the settings turned off and it doesn't even deliver 50 frames a second.
There's something tragically wrong with this game I'm afraid.
But let's talk about the actual gameplay itself because the gameplay is really
fun.
But it's detracted from obviously that, well, awful frame rate.
As a game Carmageddon stands alone,
it's unique in what it does. It aims to provide you with
a playground of,
well, full auto destruction is the best way I can put it.
The idea of the pedestrians being something that you score points off or
obviously style bonuses for taking them out in particular ways and the
large number you can take out at once and so on. It's fun.
It's no way a boring game. With the power ups as well it adds a crazy amount of
variety in the sense that you never know what you're going to get from
one race to the next. Even when you're playing a race it can give you a completely
different
outcome at the end. It's fun and
it does show that these kind of games can exist in the PC
environment and can be popular. But
you have to have an engine that works well and here it isn't working well.
When we look at multi-player I found multi-player to be
a disappointment mostly because I could never actually get into a multi-player
match.
Go to multi-player. Would you like to create a match? No I wouldn't really I'd like to
browse and see what everyone else is doing.
There are no games and I think that speaks volumes for Carmageddon
and how it's really been received by the community. Nobody's playing it multi-player.
Simple as that. There just isn't anyone around to play.
It's a big shame but ultimately I think when we look at Carmageddon Reincarnation
we have to say
it's a curiosity. It had all of the potential to be a
groundbreaking hit all over again.
But it's been released too soon. It hasn't been optimised
properly enough, or the developers have taken the decision that this
is a 30 frames per second targeted game and it is going to be released on consoles
and essentially the PC developer side of things has been used
to produce the console version of the game. Now
I said that during the beta and I'm actually sticking to that because it does strike
me
that this game feels more like a console title because of
the way the effects are working and so on, because the frame rate constantly seems to want to
push itself down to 30 frames a second,
it just feels to me that this is a game that would be much more at home
on PS4 and Xbox One and on PC you just have to accept that
unfortunately it's got an awful frame rate that does impact the quality of the
final result
and a lot of people just aren't playing it so there's really nothing going on in
multi-player.
I feel really sorry that I have to say this about a game
and a company that I have so much respect for. But,
they should have done better. It should not have been released in this state,
not considering really going back four months ago it was still in this state.
This is basically the same game we looked at in beta
with very little polish having been applied in my opinion,
certainly not as far as that frame rate is concerned and that is all-important
I think.