2001-07-10 - 11:11 p.m.

The Engines Roar

Ah, that's much better.

A couple of weeks ago Lily upgraded my computer, but a lot of the disparate parts of my new machine didn’t seem to get along very well. There were some irritating little bugs that needed to be ironed out, and she's managed to hunt down most of them.

Most annoying was the fact we couldn't seem to make a game I had just bought work: Carmageddon 2000. Well last night Lily finally got the game up and running. How did she do it? Maybe she threatened the machine with an icepick. Maybe she kicked it. Maybe she applied bubblegum to the proper places. The workings of computers are mysterious to me.

I've really been looking forward to playing Carmageddon 2000, which the third game in the Carmageddon series. I was truly addicted to Carma 2 for a while.

From what I understand the game is loosely based on the movie Death Race 2000, and it's truly evil. Basically it's a crazy road race game, and you're playing against clock. There are three ways to win a game: 1) You can run through all the checkpoints - how very dull! 2) You can destroy all the other cars - your opponents, or 3) you can kill all the pedestrians on the level - for the true sadist only. It goes without saying that my preferred method is #2, but sometimes I'm in the mood for #3.

I know I'm going to hell for playing this game.

Anyway, you get time added to your clock by passing checkpoints, killing a pedestrian or destroying the cars of the people racing against you. You got, say, 15 seconds for every pedestrian killed and a couple of minutes for destroying another car. Without that, you'd run out of time unless you ran the course perfectly.

There was a lot of fun things about Carma 2. The pedestrians curse you, or beg for their lives, or scream in terror before you paste them. There are little in-jokes hidden in the scenery. Some of the cars are quite imaginative.

The game is very, very bloody. When two tons of souped-up metal hits a hapless ped, it can get quite messy. However, the game gleefully eggs you on, giving you extra points for "Piledriver Bonus!" or "Bonus for Artistic Impression!" or "Cunning Stunt Bonus!" or simply "Nice shot, sir!"

There are also little powerups hidden throughout the board. One of my favorites was "Pinball Mode" where all the cars and pedestrians would careen crazily around the board in defiance of the laws of physics. Of course you have to be careful: it's a great way to get your car destroyed, too. Several times I've started pinball mode and was enjoying watching my opponents bouncing around, then I got hit by an unlucky shot and suddenly my car would be a smoking ball of metal hurtling through the air. Oh well.

It's obvious that I'm not the only one obsessed by the game. There are online sites where Carma fans have designed their own cars, many of them famous models. There was a Batmobile from the cartoon show, the General Lee from Dukes of Hazzard, the car from all those ZZ Top videos, the coffin dragster from the Munsters, and so on.

There seems to be no end to creativity of the amateur car designers when it comes to their own original vehicles. Some of the cars I have downloaded:

 A kid on a skateboard

 Ali Baba on a flying carpet!

 A lady pushing a grocery cart

 A giant brain mounted on a tank!

 Ash from Pokemon, driving a cardboard box! (Not a very hard vehicle}

 A little remote controlled car (tough to kill because it's so small)

 A Las Vegas showgirl riding a giant banana! (No Freudian symbolism here!)

My personal favorite was the Jetcar from the movie Buckaroo Banzai. This wasn't because I was a fan of the movie - I've never seen the film - it was because the car was so nasty. Very, very hard to damage, and very, very fast. I think it's top cruising speed was about 350 MPH - if you can call MACH 1 a "cruising speed."

The car's main problem was that it was unstable and hard to control, however extensive experience made me a master handler of that monster vehicle. It was such a bad-ass car that generally I was able to destroy anyone in just one hit.

So considering all of this, how does Carmageddon 2000 rate? Kind of disappointing actually.

The graphics for Carma 2000 actually seem no better than Carma 2. The cars are certainly more detailed, but they aren't as flashy as the cars from the previous version. The pedestrians look much the same, but they seem to be smarter and harder to hit. The blood and gore has been toned down a lot.

Most annoying is the fact that time is a real problem in this version. You only get 2 or 3 seconds for hitting a pedestrian and maybe 45 seconds for trashing another car. In Carma 2 I'd sometimes push my clock past 90 minutes, in this version I rarely get above a mere 3 1/2 minutes. That means there is no time for exploring and fooling around, darn it all!

The easiest way to run out of time is to go on ped-bashing excursions, or to try hunt down your opponents. It simply takes more time than you have. Basically you are forced to run the race, because that's the only guaranteed way to finish the game, and you need to do that in order to save the points you've made.

There are also quirks to the menus and other pages that are annoying. The non-game part of Carma 2000 seems much more poorly designed than its predecessor.

All that being said, I am enjoying playing the game.

One of the reasons that I like this game, and I liked the previous version, is that it gives me a little more control over my environment.

I live in a very noisy neighborhood. I'm constantly being disturbed by the sounds of roaring engines, honking horns and squealing tires. Two of the cars that I see parked across the street have racing stripes on them, for fuck's sake! I once wanted a car with racing stripes, but that was when I was eight. It's a little scary that when I go out driving I'm sharing the road with these people.

So it makes me feel a little better that the roaring of engines is louder INSIDE the Hamster Palace than outside.