"OH MY GAWD! It's time to rejoice the time of "Cell" Damaging!"

It just keeps coming over and over again...more car combat games. As I went to a friend's house, which he owns a GameCube, we decided to go to our local Blockbuster rental store to rent a few games. I was walking through the DVD movie isles to check out a movie I could watch on my PS2. But then, what I saw through the shelves, shocked me. It was in the games isle, entitled ''Cel Damage'', and was slapped with a printed logo that had said ''Nintendo GameCube'' on the top of the case. It was that not-so-bad-but-not-good-either game again. As I stood there, I was thinking, ''Hey, it's on the GameCube this time, so it must be better than the XBOX version...''. My friend and I had rented the game, along with a few others. We got to my friend’s house soon enough and rushed to the door. As we sat down for a cup of coffee (well, not exactly coffee, but some juice and/or soda), we talked about things and my friend soon asked me why we rented Cel Damage. I told him the reason, then a few minutes later, we decided to try it out…

It’s just the same thing again, but kind of different.

I am simply not a fan of car combat games, because they really annoy me. I am extremely annoyed with Cel Damage, next to the Twisted Metal series (exclude TMB from that, cause TMB is tight!; for those who don’t know what TMB is, it’s Twisted Metal Black). The GameCube version of the Cel Damage was kind of better compared to the XBOX version, but it wasn’t enough to please my likes for the genre and/or game.

Of course, many people dislike the XBOX controller (can’t say “hate”, “hate” is such a strong word :P), because of it’s size, uncomfortable feeling, and it’s problems that cause people to have hand/arm seizures. I personally dislike the GameCube controller, but hell, I’m 10 times more comfortable with that controller. The controls for Cel Damage were much smoother than the XBOX version. Since the game is like an adrenaline rush, it’s hard to keep up to what you are doing. There are still many cheap deaths like in the XBOX version, and the enemies seem to be skilled even on easy difficulty. The music hasn’t pleased me as much either. I’m still very disappointed with it. And the sounds, oh geez, are simply still A-N-N-O-Y-I-N-G! And speaking of annoying, it’s better to hear yo’ mama singing a rap/heavy metal type of song than listening to the standards that this game sets. The graphics aren’t as good as the XBOX version, in which I knew. The GameCube is too weak to exploit it’s own “good” graphics. There were tons of jagged lines, and look, WE ARE IN THE NEXT-GEN PEOPLE! Oh lord, please don’t let this kill me…

There are some good things to this version though…

The game is still a hybrid, adrenaline, fun game to play at times. Sure, you can say it’s fun for the first time you play it, or maybe not, you may not enjoy it. It’s still considered by me the “Fastest Car Combat game I have ever played”. More car combat games may need to learn a lesson from Cel Damage, make their car combat games faster, much faster, because slow games suck.

This draws to my conclusion…

The GameCube version of Cel Damage was alright, but it wasn't enough to please me.

Final Score: 6/10

Rent or Buy?
You are gonna want to either Rent it, or don’t get it at all. It’s not all too disappointing, but not all too awesome either.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 03/18/02, Updated 03/18/02