The game looked and felt mediocre and the gameplay itself was said to be boring and frustrating. It was criticised because of its lack of innovation and, ironically, due to the decision to play it safe. This was the game that many believed killed the franchise, largely because Stainless Games was not involved in its development as SCi thought it would be a better idea to give Torus Games a shot (famous at the time for licensed ventures such as Jurassic Park and Hello Kitty).
Much like the previous game, it was well received by critics. Stainless MD, Patrick Buckland, was driving a purple TVR Cerbera at the time, which is what inspired him to include it in the game without the manufacturer’s permission. Despite the automaker not being happy about this, it was left in anyway, with a slap on the wrist serving as punishment. The game was filled with Easter eggs and references to pop culture as it made use of a character based on Sylvester Stallone (the star of Death Race 2000), a cop car seen in The Blues Brothers and even some competitive racing cars that were on the track at the time. On top of it all, they even got Iron Maiden to compose the soundtrack as it was the perfect genre to play for a vehicular combat game. This was Carpocalypse Now and it boasted more maps, freedom, cars and, of course, gore. Other than that, Carmageddon managed to sell two million copies, which was something to be proud of in 1997.īuilding on the success of its last game, Stainless Games joined forces with SCi once again to hit the market with an even bigger and messier Carmageddon. Sadly, the ports to other consoles were not executed in good fashion and in this respect, the game failed. Despite having a decent rendering engine, the graphics and playability of Carmageddon were shockingly bad but the media provided it with favourable reviews because of its new and controversial persona. Carmageddon wasn’t revolutionary in terms of vehicular combat gaming as Death Rally, Interstate ’76 and Vigilante 8 had all appeared around the same time and were arguably better.