Carmageddon: Reincarnation

It's the latter-day high-octane car smashing ped mashing antidote to racing games.

Reincarnation is trash and proud of it. It celebrates its roots and is consequent in what it tries to achieve: To be a thoroughly entertaining waste of time. Well… Mission accomplished.

With a little bit more courage and polish, Reincarnation could have been a great starting point for a reboot of a classic franchise. The gameplay is still fun and silly, but there is nothing really new here.

Carmageddon: Reincarnation is - on one hand - a game with lots of satisfying details, great gameplay and cool bloody atmosphere. On the other - it's quite ugly and the technology used to make it tick is mediocre at best. The new Carmageddon is aimed first and foremost at the fans of the original games and even they will notice that there's still some work to be done.

The good ol' Carmageddon is back, but it's a technical mess. Whenever it feels like working, it delivers the Carmageddon we all now and love, but you should rather wait and hope it's all fixed before buying it.

The developers were so fixated on nostalgia that they failed to offer anything to modern gamers. [07/2015, p.72]

Carmageddon Reincarnation is a funny game and a good honoring to the saga. However, it has poor graphs and a lot of problems of performance. Only for fans.

Prepare to return in the world of Carmageddon, with a carnage of bodies and engines on fire.

Even when wearing the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia one has to admit: Reincarnation just isn't a good game - but it's very faithful to the original.

The return of the "kill all the pedestrians" series remains almost unaltered in its the original formula, extending it with new game modes and not disappointing those who expect tons of destruction and crazy power-ups. On the other side the effort to recover the magic of the past must face a technological deficit and an awful optimization.

Carmageddon: Reincarnation is just like a once-beloved pet that came back from the cemetery: it’s kind of familiar, but it stinks, looks bad and falls apart, so playing with it isn’t as fun as it once was. [Issue#199, p.79]

Sometimes, such fondly remembered franchises can be revived to stand alongside contemporary greats, simultaneously satisfying our younger selves and our more demanding modern expectations. Sadly, despite Stainless Games’ best efforts to recapture the wacky allure of the 1997 original, Carmageddon: Reincarnation is not one of those games.

The game is poorly optimized, and while the spirit of the old Carmageddon games is somewhat still there, Stainless Games could and should have done more to release Reincarnation in a better shape.

Very painful resurrection of manic races. Reincarnation gameplay gets tries and achieves the qualities of the original Carmageddon. Unfortunately, the game is in such unfinished state, that you won't believe it was released.

Carmageddon: Reincarnation looks like a bad port from the original game. All its fun mechanics are still there, but the game suffers from bad controls and outdated graphics.

It’s the same as it always was, and that isn’t exactly a point in its favor.

Even the combat is ancient and frustrating. [Aug 2015, p.78]

No, Carmageddon Reincarnation won’t make anyone happy. The game engine is rubbish, the graphics makes the game looks like it’s ten years old (in a bad way) and the physics is a joke. Even the hardcore fans should avoid this.

The only truly shocking thing about this Carmageddon reincarnation is the fact that they charge 25 bucks for it. This monstrosity is about as fun as getting run over by a car. [Jul 2015, p.066]