Carmageddon 3: TDR 2000

"The best Carmageddon yet? I think so"

This game is brilliant, I've played both other Carmageddon games, and knew I had to get this, but I didn't know it would be so good when I first bought it.

Gameplay - 8/10

It's excellent, pure and simple, the old Carmageddon games, while great after about 2 mins into the race you had practically added an hour to your gameplay time, hence you could just cruise around everywhere just looking at the detail on the game, this time the timers been set up to not pass 3:59, and whenever you flatten a pedestrian (I have the UK version, and I'm getting actually pedestrians here, strange) you only get 2 seconds of time, now when I first picked this up, I immediatly thought that the game had suddenly sucked, but very soon I realised it meant you had to work harder.

Then we have the missions, every area has 3 races and 3 missions, now this is good, you get a set time limit to do the mission, sometimes it's destroy a specific car, sometimes it's to grab some bombs and blow the hell out of a building or a boat, whatever they ask you to do it's always fun, I actually finish the races as soon as possible to get to these missions, because they always seem to send you running to the most deserted locations on the map, who would have thought there was a lift in the middle of a building, or that you could climb to the top of a skyscraper, or even go through a tomb without being told to go there? What this means is that you can replay the previous levels afterwards and search for the powerups to add to your power/offensive/defense limits, which makes the game last a lot longer.

The acual races give you the basic Carmageddon run, you either kill all the pedestrians (hell no, I aint gonna do a search of the whole town to kill all of them, no chance), destroy all the cars (fun, but not easy with the timer, the timer could do with going up a little bit further), or complete the race (now actually a challenge in itself with the timer). So whatever way you go, it's fun, I have a tendancy to complete the race and then reply the level later on to destroy the cars so I can buy them at a later time.

Story - 5/10

Not much to say here, it's Carmageddon the whole story is based on getting to each location via the mission, so you have to escape from each area, still doing so is very fun.

Graphics - 9/10

Some people preferred the original graphics because it was easier to see the cars, I prefer these graphics due to the fact everything looks more realistic, the slums look run down, the fun fair, okay so I preferred the old fun fair level, but only because of the log flume :), all in all the graphics look excellent, and the arrows pointing you on your way during the missions are a well recieved bonus.

Sound - 7/10

I preferred Carmageddon 2's sound personally, but then I'm also a massive Iron Maiden fan, so when Carmageddon had Iron Maiden on it, I knew that I had to buy the game, great tunes and great game rolled into one. Of course when I bought TDR 2000 I knew the game well, so I bought it regardless of the sound, now don't get me wrong, the music isn't bad, but SCi sound really have stayed with the Iron Maiden type of music. Even if they didn't have any singing on it. Still can't have everything I suppose.

Replayability - 9/10

It's a sure thing with Carmageddon, you keep playing and playing until you finally get all the cars, and I think once I've done that I'll move on to trying to kill all the pedestrians on every level, could make for a fun game.

We also have the ''free driving'' option where you set the timer, the amount of cars, and amount of pedestrians on the track, so you can do whatever you want in your own time limit, so if you don't like the time limit and just want to maim pedestrians or destroy cars, this is the way to do it, however although at the end of the race you can buy cars, when you go back tot he single player game your credits will be the same and you wont get to use the car you bought, I think it's just something that was overlooked when the game shipped, nothing really important though.

Overall - 9/10

Even without the sounds it's a great game, hell if you don't like the music, turn the music off in the options and stick a CD into your CD player or turn the radio on. All in all a great game, I've only had it 2 days, and already Im onto the 4th area, admittedly I've been playing from when I wake up to when I go online at 8pm, but we're talking hardcore Carmageddon playing here, I just love those missions.

Round-up

Basically if you like the first 2 Carmageddon's, or liked any of the GTA games, this game is for you, also if you suffer from a lot of stress at work, this would also be useful, as the first game was good in helping me wind down after a bad day at work because you can take your anger out on those poor defensless pedestrians :)

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 12/08/01, Updated 12/08/01