PixlBit

I don't want to be a gamer anymore.

I’m not a choosy gamer. I’m probably one of the most happy-go-lucky gamers in the world. When I play a game, I focus on what I like about it and try to ignore what I don’t like. If a game has flaws I try not to think about them and enjoy what the game got right. I also have a wide variety of tastes; the only two categories I don’t like much are fighting and sports. It’s pretty easy for me to enjoy a game. In fact, other than some sports and fighting games, I’ve probably never played a game I didn’t like on some level. After Carmageddon 64, things will never be that way again.

Before Carmageddon was a simpler time, where all games were good. A time when I believed that no game was truly bad. Until that fateful day when I first played Carmageddon, a game so abysmal it has absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever, I was blissful with my naïveté. I had heard little about it, just that it was originally a PC game which had the pedestrians changed to zombies for the Nintendo 64 release. That sounded manageable, but as I would come to realize, the game has so many flaws it was released only out of spite.

Grain. In cereal, it's a good thing, but when it gets into video games, that's when it becomes a nightmare. Although there's no fog, the graphics are so grainy I had to check to make sure I wasn't watching a twenty-year-old VHS tape. It is so hard to distinguish which way the directional arrows are pointing; what's a power-up and what's a rock; and even the computer cars. General Mills always touts how healthy grains are, but these will do nothing but make me sick. The animation is stiff and choppy, and the chuggy framerate is comparable to the daring 3D games featured on the Super NES.

Distortion. Often used with techno music for goofy effects, but it shouldn't be present in a video game. When the music has the sound quality of a damaged vinyl record, it doesn't matter what the compositions are like, they will be bad no matter what. At the start of every tune, there's even split-second spurts of static. The sound effects not only suffer from this same poor quality, but also lack of variety as well. There is only one engine noise, one tire-screech noise, one zombie splat sound, and maybe three different collision effects. The game is also supposedly in stereo, but unless I'm deaf in one ear and don't know it, it's monaural.

Thought. Most people have lots of them, but none of it went into this game's controls. With any of the three control settings, either the A or B button is used to accelerate. Switching the view, selecting an item, and using an item are all done with the C buttons, which makes those actions impossible to perform without releasing the accelerator. The abort function is always L, which is a poor choice for something that is used quite often. But all of this doesn't matter when one of the most basic fundamentals is missing; if a racing game can't even implement analogue control for steering, there's no coming back from that.

Fun. It's what we all just want to have, and the last place I'd expect it to be absent is in a video game. There are essentially three courses: a city setting, a mountain quarry, and the woods. Each of the game's tracks is composed of a specific combination of roadways and passages from each course, which, combined with the hard-to-spot arrow markers, makes getting lost extremely easy. Although there are only a few checkpoints per track, they are small in size, and require driving directly under the checkpoint sign or else it will not register. Checkpoints have been deliberately placed right after sharp turns or large ramps, which makes it likely to miss one and not even know it.

Zombies. I thought they were talking about actual zombies, but the computer cars act just the same. The AI in this game is so simple-minded, I've never even seen an AI car finish a race. All they will do is try to wreck each other, and sometimes, the player, which brings me to the damage system. If the damage meter is depleted, you go boom. Pretty much everything causes damage to the car, including hitting ramps, going over small bumps, and even holding the accelerator during the initial countdown. Repairing the car is as simple as pressing the R button, which comes at the cost of credits. These are earned by ramming other cars, running over zombies, and finishing races.

Even the one thing that supposedly sets this game apart from other racers – running over zombies – is poor in execution. They very rarely appear on the racing course, I often went an entire race without seeing any. I had to go out of my way to find them, but there wasn't enough time to kill very many anyway. In the first few races, lots of time is given to complete the race, which means I could zoom on ahead and never saw the computer cars again. In the later races, there isn't nearly enough time to finish a race, and time bonuses can only be earned by ramming other cars. It essentially becomes a destruction derby as crashing the computer cars is the only way to “win the race.”

Carmageddon is a game that has failed on all counts. It has blended graphics, it has unbearable sound, it has poor control, it doesn't have any racing thrills, and it doesn't even come close to the only goal it originally set out to achieve. By trying to implement too much, it has overlooked the basics of a racing game and ended up going nowhere. Carmageddon is not only the worst racing game on the Nintendo 64, it is the worst game on the Nintendo 64.

As if to defy the very existence of the quality assurance department, this game was released by Titus, creator of the infamous Superman 64. I can’t even fathom how any publisher could possibly pass this game off as a finished product, and am immaculately disgusted that the company had the gall to release titles such as this. If I had paid $50 for this, I’d be so angry that I would chop the cartridge into bits just to make sure no one else felt the pain. Even having paid ten percent of that, I feel intrusively insulted.

And now, I live in fear of playing another Carmageddon. Another awful game that is just plain no fun. Another painful experience that makes me curse the very system it’s featured on. Carmageddon isn't just the worst Nintendo 64 game, it is one of the worst games ever made. It has tarnished my cheerful outlook on games. Never had I thought a game could be without redeeming qualities. Never before had I believed a company would allow something so terrible to exist. Never again will I be so foolish.

Yet still, I want to believe…