Italian indie developer 34BigThings, creators among other things of the mighty fast futuristic racing of the Redout series, have decided to tackle a historic franchise focused on vehicular mayhem. The result is a rather unique roguelite racer spin-off with the destruction dial turned up to eleven. Here’s our Carmageddon: Rogue Shift review, tested on PC and the ROG Xbox Ally X.
Controversial classics
For those who may not remember, Carmageddon is a seminal 90’s racing classic. Racing, of course, is selling it a bit short. It’s more of a series of death races and destruction derbies, where you can either finish first by being fastest and evading drama, or literally murdering everyone around you. For good measure, there’s even urban settings with pedestrians to run over – something that generated a major controversy, back in the day, akin to the ones seen for Grand Theft Auto and Mortal Kombat games. This led to countless countries banning the games, with some instead receiving a heavily censored versions – usually substituting civilians with robots or zombies.
It is a dance with the undead that Carmageddon: Rogue Shift aims for, as the game’s fast-paced events feature hordes of zombies roaming the landscape, with speed boosts gained for splatting ’em over our windshield. On the one hand, I can absolutely see why a developer and publisher would rather stay out of the controversy, not creating a videogame that literally rewards you for mauling civilians with no negative consequence whatsoever – aside from a slight speed loss, if the bodies you are running over become an obstacle. At the same time… they did choose to use the Carmageddon IP, instead of doing anything else, so this feels like a self-imposed challenge to begin with.
Fun fact: we also sat down with Giuseppe Enrico Franchi, game director at 34BigThings, to chat about how they got their hands on the Carmageddon IP, the challenges they faced in creating a roguelike racer, whether there’s any plans for post-launch support and much more. Even the switch from humans to zombies came up in the conversation, so be sure to check it out!
Concentrated carnage
That isn’t to say, of course, that the real meat and potatoes of the Carmageddon experience can not be found in here. That is, the brutal destruction-based races where just about anything goes. The contenders’ fast cars are equipped with a weapon of choice: there’s a massive shotgun, a machine rifle, a homing laser, missiles and plenty more to choose from. Ramming other drivers is more than efficient as a strategy, too, with the cars capable of doing so-called side-barges. These are, effectively, unrealistic but mighty satisfying dashes to the left or right that the player can activate at any moment, resulting in a slingshot that can send our opponent into a wall – or even blow up wholesale, if their car’s health is low enough.
The tracks we race on feel something out of a FlatOut game. Long straights made chaotic by a large presence of items to smash through, ramps and other obstacles. Crashing into things feels crunchy, weigthy, yet our heavy car can absolutely end up flipping in an instant if we’re not careful. As the aforementioned Bugbear classic, cars indeed feel quite heavy to drive, with a lot of tight corners where we need to be careful not to smash the car into pieces. After all, Carmageddon: Rogue Shift is a destruction-based racer, and smashing up our car is game over. Forza Horizon this ain’t, here you need to look after your vehicle and you can’t afford to wallride copiously.
Continued competition
You may be wondering why the game’s title contains that little word. A tiny, 5-letter term that some love, but others absolutely learned to loathe. Rogue, that is. Well, the latest Carmageddon drops traditional racing games’ progression systems, opting instead for a roguelite formula. Every run, the player gets to choose between a branching path of events. These can be regular races, survival events, boss fights, but even more peaceful propositions like car repair, loadout improvements or risk versus reward looting segments. And you’ll need the repairs and upgrades, trust me, as the level of challenge can be quite high. Not only are there a lot of opponents and dangers on track, but there’s even this post-apocalyptic world’s equivalent of cops, trying to stop these dangerous races – further throwing fire to the flame in what is already vehicular chaos.
The survival/roguelike aspect means that every race is a microcosm of a bigger goal. In most events, you aren’t forced to win – a top 3 is enough to proceed. Other times, Elite races pop up, and victory is mandatory. There’s survival events, where you have to survive a few laps but also not have the time run out on you – so extreme caution isn’t viable, either. Carmageddon: Rogue Shift is a destructive game where you keep smashing up your AI opponents, who will then happily respawn and come back for the next round. The player does not have this privilege. Sure our healthbar is longer, but elimination usually means game over. Three ways to avoid this. First, well, don’t take a lot of damage. Second, a last stand mode – before getting destroyed, you have about 10 seconds to find a repair power-up to stay alive. Lastly, golden tickets, which can be bought in rare occasions and can give you a unique chance to come back into the fight.
Complex contraptions
Of course, your chances of surviving and progressing through the various events largely depends on the build you improvise in your run. Multiple different cars are available, each with its starting statistics and powers, and then a customizable loadout can be built as the player progresses. Updates focused on speed or durability, fun builds like making all your side-barges explosive, or slowing down your fire rate but making your shots way more lethal. There are many approaches, and different stages and boss fights may favour some builds over others. To increase your chances of powering yourself up, the player even gets to complete optional challenges in each event – sometimes, these are a bit risky, encouraging an aggressive playstyle, but the reward is more cash to spend towards upgrades, so it can be really worth it.
The roguelite structure of the game offers a good loadout variety, allowing for some real creative solutions. The actual depth and variety, however, is rather limited in Carmageddon: Rogue Shift. The selection of tracks and modes that can come up in our runs is very limited and, in fact, a successful match that culminates in the third of 3 bosses only takes about an hour to complete. You’re unlikely to complete all that on the first few tries, and the player can unlock new cars, skills, weapons and permanent boosts to each stat to make future runs easier and more varied. But aside from unlocking further abilities and achievements, the game doesn’t have much left to offer after beating the final boss.
Crucial criticism
Indeed, a lack of depth and variety is one of the game’s biggest problems. The selection of tracks is very limited. There’s only a handful of very similar game modes, with very little variety among them in terms of gameplay. Even the survival mode, where you have to survive a few laps, is effectively a regular time attack, since you are on a strict time limit so you can’t exactly take your sweet time either. While there are various loadout options, upgrades and more to unlock permanently over the many runs, the gameplay and structure hardly ever evolves, and chances are you’ll have seen almost everything the game has to offer after a few hours. There isn’t even a multiplayer component. You do unlock some really fun cars, and there’s a decent variety of bosses. But ultimately, such a lack of variety is a bit alarming, considering this is a 39.99 USD/39,99 EUR release, and not a cute little indie racer for a few bucks.
Reading the storefront descriptions of the game, you’d think there’s at least bits and pieces of plot and lore in Carmageddon: Rogue Shift, but not really. It’s non-stop action with only brief comic-style intermissions, with zero dialogue or context given when a menacing big boss (or their vehicle) enters the field. That’s it, really. You can read that the game is about a lethal racing competition set in a post-apocalyptic world, but the game doesn’t do much beyond showing the vistas of this context. Speaking of vistas, almost every race is at night or dusk or something rather dark. The gritty look of the game is fine, and the performance on my PC was good, but a bit more colour wouldn’t have hurt. Fortunately, the game runs extremely well even on the ROG Xbox Ally X and other, relatively “compromised” hardware builds, which is excellent to see. We could only play the PC version, but it bodes very well for the optimization of the console ports too – including the Nintendo Switch 2.
Carmageddon caveats
Carmageddon: Rogue Shift is a mechanically satisfying destruction-based racer, offering high-octane and chaotic races combining bold weapons, lots of zombies and lots of crunching metal. Its roguelite twist offers high risk scenarios where you’ll have to think twice about excessively daring moves, but it also feels like something introduced partly to mitigate the game’s limited depth and variety. Completing everything may take quite a lot of runs, but it only takes a few hours to test virtually all the game has to offer, barring a few later unlocked weapons, cars and upgrades. Racing fans looking for a destructive experience will likely enjoy Carmageddon: Rogue Shift, but its array of content may prove to be a tad too slim for the $40 launch price.
Review code provided by the publisher.
Carmageddon: Rogue Shift
Played on
PC
PROS
- Satisfying handling
- Lovely destruction and chaos
- Mighty boss battles
- Excellent performance even on weaker hardware
CONS
- The roguelike formula makes the limited variety turn into repetition quickly
- Virtually zero lore or story shown within the game itself
- The launch price is a little high for what's being offered
- No form of multiplayer whatsoever
