Game Entropy

I’d contend there is little more amusing than driving a rocket-powered car at high speed into a wall and being flung through the windscreen like a ragdoll, or ploughing recklessly through a field of cows setting light to everything with a flame thrower to obtain a “barbecue bonus”.

I’d hazard a guess that this may not be a particularly universally held view, or one that would be approved of generally, but in the world of gaming – hey anything goes.

And so it does go, with great regularity, in some of my favourite driving games – most recently FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage. Navigating through a debris strewn track, which has been created by what can only be described as novel driving styles to wreak havoc, all the time pointing out that “it’d be really nice if I could see where I was going” (although that seems to be entirely optional – and more often than not detrimental to the chaos caused), or yelling “EAT IT!” when ramming someone into a wall – yes it is quite carnage filled (not entirely sure it’s ultimate though). I do spend more than a few hours playing it, and as was with the case with the “predecessor” in my personal collection of favourite driving games; Carmageddon.

However, each time an excellent game like these come out, the developers or publishers inevitably go bust, and we never see a follow up. We’re left to scavenge hardware and operating systems for years to follow, trying to keep at least a couple of bits of kit alive enough to be able to continue playing, but it is a tough battle to keep them going – and I fear that Carmageddon may be passing beyond our playable reach (mostly down to what appears to be an IPX issue more than anything else).

It’s quite sad, in several ways (I know), but it’d be helped if we had a more steady stream of these style of games instead of the usual dull procession of movie tie-ins or new versions of already tired series – ditch those and give us some entertaining physics in a sandbox environment, with ridiculous cars and multiplayer capability... then go bust and get someone else to do another game within a year or two... simples!