Decimate Drive is alright. Going entirely off of the premise, this had the prospective for being one of the most effective horror games I'd be able to play. Growing up amidst a handful of cases where friends and family fell victim to (thankfully minor) vehicular accidents instilled in me a profound fear of cars. They're fucked up things, densely destructive machines, screaming hunks of steel and aluminium that instantly alter the brain chemistry of anyone behind the wheel into callous freaks fully convinced in their own invulnerability. Isn't it fucking crazy that you could be minding your own business, walking on the pavement, doing everything right, and something could just happen? All because of someone having a bad day/off their nut/losing control/insisting on breaking the speed limit to shave a minute off their commute? How am I supposed to be normal about that? I've certainly never been. It's tricky business on the Cu Chulainn Causeway, brothers 😔.
The setting of Decimate Drive, being a simple enough premise of going from A to B while under the relentless assault of vehicles in the dead of night is quite literally what I have regular nightmares of, I was interested from the jump. It handles the core pretty well, you're basically just running from checkpoint to checkpoint in the midst of a handful of underlit destruction derbies. Not exactly rich with mechanics or anything, but the game's short runtime and abundance of increasingly fucked vehicle types kept fanning the flames of tension.
There are moments where Decimate Drive hits some incredibly high notes; adept use of lighting and sound design to evoke tension. It doesn't take long for the artifice to set in, however, sharply shifting gear into a game akin to like Clustertruck. Despite the presentation of the game gunning for a sense of realism, the perpetual crashing of vehicles without any visible damage undermines the intensity and unintentionally creates a sense that they aren't putting in enough effort to pose a genuine threat to the player lol.
Ultimately this game pushed me to check in on BEWARE, which I am happy to see is still in active development :)
The setting of Decimate Drive, being a simple enough premise of going from A to B while under the relentless assault of vehicles in the dead of night is quite literally what I have regular nightmares of, I was interested from the jump. It handles the core pretty well, you're basically just running from checkpoint to checkpoint in the midst of a handful of underlit destruction derbies. Not exactly rich with mechanics or anything, but the game's short runtime and abundance of increasingly fucked vehicle types kept fanning the flames of tension.
There are moments where Decimate Drive hits some incredibly high notes; adept use of lighting and sound design to evoke tension. It doesn't take long for the artifice to set in, however, sharply shifting gear into a game akin to like Clustertruck. Despite the presentation of the game gunning for a sense of realism, the perpetual crashing of vehicles without any visible damage undermines the intensity and unintentionally creates a sense that they aren't putting in enough effort to pose a genuine threat to the player lol.
Ultimately this game pushed me to check in on BEWARE, which I am happy to see is still in active development :)