Much has changed since Carmageddon first crashed onto the scene in the spring of 1997. Back then, damage modelling in your typical racing game involved slapping a few scuffs on the paintwork and maybe a crack in the windshield, while the idea of aiming your car at helpless screaming bystanders and having their viscera sprayed at the screen in exchange for added time was seemingly - if the brief period of tabloid hysteria was anything to go by - beyond all common decency.
These days we expect a game's ability to display impairment to be not just realistic but applied universally, whether it's as a result of a collision between a vehicle and a building, or a bullet and a human skull - and if we can get a lingering slow motion repeat and some kind of award to go with it, so much the better.
More significantly in the context of Carma's 15 year absence, the concept of the vehicle-as-weapon is now so evolved and so commonplace as to be secondary to the immersiveness of the game worlds they occupy. The most recent iterations of Just Cause, Far Cry and Grand Theft Auto all come with advanced vehicular manslaughter fitted as standard, but they are celebrated more for worlds that are coherent and developed enough to put context and consequence to a whole range of players actions and objectives, not just running people over for the fun of it.
Read more
Carmageddon: Reincarnation was due out next week but now it's due out next month.
Gory vehicle smash 'em-up Carmageddon: Reincarnation leaves Steam Early Access and launches proper on 23rd April 2015, developer Stainless has announced.
The release version of the game includes a career mode, which consists of 16 chapters. Each chapter has three or four events, making for a total of 50. There's also multiplayer for up to eight players.
Here are the event types:
Read more
A good measure of a Carmageddon games' success is how quickly it makes you honk with inappropriate laughter. With Carmageddon 2 I think this took about five seconds, although I was a teenager at the time. I'm still waiting for TDR 2000 to give me a giggle.
Splat! Carmageddon is back in a new game, bearing the subtitle Reincarnation, from original Isle of Wight developer Stainless Games. Funded on Kickstarter and now available on Steam Early Access, it's still in a very early pre-alpha state, but so far seems faithful to the series' tasteless renegade spirit.
It's hard to believe that Carmageddon was once the bête noire of gaming. Back in the innocent halcyon days of the 1990s, when Mortal Kombat's crudely digitised dismemberment was enough to ruffle the feathers of the great and good, a game where you were actively encouraged to roar around in armoured vehicles, murdering pedestrians with crazed abandon, was like a red rag to a morally indignant bull.
Today, Carmageddon's gore-soaked take on Wacky Races seems positively quaint, its squealing guitars and brattish sensibilities no more likely to topple society than Limp Bizkit is to reinvent rock music. What was once forbidden fruit has become a strangely cosy nostalgia brand - but while Carmageddon may no longer be guaranteed to raise tabloid ire, that doesn't mean it's stopped being deliciously transgressive fun.
Now available for Early Access purchase on Steam, the version of Carmageddon: Reincarnation on offer lives up the billing. This is a very early build - pre-alpha, in fact - so anyone still harbouring the notion that "early access" means "demo version" will be in for a surprise.
Read more
The rebirth of violent driving game Carmageddon is finally nearly in our hands.
Stainless will now give Carmageddon: Reincarnation backers the game and all downloadable content following a backlash.
Carmageddon: Reincarnation launches on Steam as an early access title during the first quarter of 2014, Stainless Games has announced.
Remember Carmageddon: Reincarnation? It was a successfully Kickstarted, modest reboot of Carmageddon for PC, Mac and Linux. Originally it was due out, well, nowish, although development was extended at Christmas time.
Newspapers had a field day when the original Carmageddon video game was released on PC in 1997. Cars smashing into people, ripping them apart, great torrents of blood flooding car bonnets?
Mac and Linux versions of Carmageddon Reincarnation are confirmed after its Kickstarter ended with 156 per cent of its target raised.
UK studio Stainless Games had asked for $400,000. It ended up with $625,143 after 30 days of campaigning.
In addition to a copy of the game backers receive rewards ranging from t-shirts to posters, miniature models of the game's cars to a chance to appear in the game as a pedestrian. The top tier reward was to become one of the game's driver characters with a custom car of your own design. This reward sold out, with all three places taken up by backers who were willing to give $10,000.
Read more
The Isle of Wight doesn't really do excitement. My wife, an Islander, often regales me about the time BHS in Newport installed an escalator - and she joined the crowds of people queuing up to have a go on it. If you ignore the increasingly chronic youth unemployment (as most do) the Island is a place of beautiful green fields, cream teas and a well-supported donkey sanctuary. It's not where you'd expect to find the birthplace of Carmageddon.
The Carmageddon: Reincarnation Kickstarter is funded.
The original Carmageddon PC game and Splat Pack expansion are heading to GOG.com, developer Stainless Games has announced.
A full-scale, "all bells and whistles", triple-A Carmageddon game is the "ultimate goal" of series creator Stainless Games.
Carmageddon creator Stainless Games has signed up to speak at Rezzed: The PC and Indie Games Show this summer in Brighton.
Carmageddon: Reincarnation, a planned revival of the infamous '90s vehicular combat series, has turned to fan-funding site Kickstarter to get off the ground.
Original Carmageddon developer Stainless Games has reacquired the smash and crash racing IP.
The Carmageddon reboot that emerged last week is an independent project, a new report claims.
Square Enix may be about to unveil a brand new Carmageddon game.
