It's customary, when reviewing an old game of sentimental value, to do a little literary hop back in time as a means to convey the circumstances in which you played it.
I'm going to do that too... Sort of.
Truth is, my actual relationship with Ultimate Carnage when it released was it being overshadowed by a whole bunch of better games on Christmas Day, 2007. Yes, I am a mega gearhead, always have been, but this game was at the LITERAL bottom of the pile with Crackdown, Halo 3, Eternal Sonata, Crash of the Titans (which sucked) and Gears of War.
I put the disc in for 15 minutes, said "wow cool graphics!" to my dad, and immediately put Halo 3 in. He knew I'd do that. I knew I'd do that. We all knew I'd do that. It was the entire reason I wanted a 360.
Part of this is simply because Ultimate Carnage was, at the time, utterly unremarkable. It was a racing game with tight, weighty steering and a soundtrack that was 99% rock and metal with like two post-hardcore tracks. It and like... Every other racing game not named Burnout back then.
Recently, this game was freed from DRM-hell, so I figured I'd give it a shot, and it's funny how this game suddenly is remarkable nowadays.
NFS' failure and Forza's dominance unfortunately led to a degree of homogeny in driving games, where they all tried to straddle a line between arcadey and weighty. It worked for Forza and modern NFS, but for other games it became a burden more than a boon.
UC, by way of being an older game, manages to somehow be fairly fresh.
UC's driving is particularly weighty, with even the faster cars having a bit of heft to them especially on the drift. The purpose of this weight is to facilitate late Burnout style car clashes.
Races become a game of both smashing your opponents off the road and crashing through terrain to make your own shortcuts, and unlike many 00s driving games the upgrade system does NOT allow you have your cake and eat it too. You can go fast or you can go hard, but you have to pick one or you'll have a master-of-none car.
Going fast means you need to be good at both avoiding other racers and keeping the car steady on bumpy terrain, while going hard allows you to acquire boost by bashing other racers to death at the cost of potentially failing to catch up if you're not aggressive enough.
And... That's it. No, really.
UC's appeal to you as a 2024 videogamer is that it's a solid racing game with great physics and a fucking amazing alt rock soundtrack - though I wish it had more of the great hiphop tracks that defined 00s racing games. The courses are solid, race length is perfect, it's the ideal middle ground between Burnout Paradise, Forza Horizon and 2010s NFS, and it looks pretty for the time.
Is it exceptional? No. But when it's this good, does it have to be?
I don't think so.
I'm going to do that too... Sort of.
Truth is, my actual relationship with Ultimate Carnage when it released was it being overshadowed by a whole bunch of better games on Christmas Day, 2007. Yes, I am a mega gearhead, always have been, but this game was at the LITERAL bottom of the pile with Crackdown, Halo 3, Eternal Sonata, Crash of the Titans (which sucked) and Gears of War.
I put the disc in for 15 minutes, said "wow cool graphics!" to my dad, and immediately put Halo 3 in. He knew I'd do that. I knew I'd do that. We all knew I'd do that. It was the entire reason I wanted a 360.
Part of this is simply because Ultimate Carnage was, at the time, utterly unremarkable. It was a racing game with tight, weighty steering and a soundtrack that was 99% rock and metal with like two post-hardcore tracks. It and like... Every other racing game not named Burnout back then.
Recently, this game was freed from DRM-hell, so I figured I'd give it a shot, and it's funny how this game suddenly is remarkable nowadays.
NFS' failure and Forza's dominance unfortunately led to a degree of homogeny in driving games, where they all tried to straddle a line between arcadey and weighty. It worked for Forza and modern NFS, but for other games it became a burden more than a boon.
UC, by way of being an older game, manages to somehow be fairly fresh.
UC's driving is particularly weighty, with even the faster cars having a bit of heft to them especially on the drift. The purpose of this weight is to facilitate late Burnout style car clashes.
Races become a game of both smashing your opponents off the road and crashing through terrain to make your own shortcuts, and unlike many 00s driving games the upgrade system does NOT allow you have your cake and eat it too. You can go fast or you can go hard, but you have to pick one or you'll have a master-of-none car.
Going fast means you need to be good at both avoiding other racers and keeping the car steady on bumpy terrain, while going hard allows you to acquire boost by bashing other racers to death at the cost of potentially failing to catch up if you're not aggressive enough.
And... That's it. No, really.
UC's appeal to you as a 2024 videogamer is that it's a solid racing game with great physics and a fucking amazing alt rock soundtrack - though I wish it had more of the great hiphop tracks that defined 00s racing games. The courses are solid, race length is perfect, it's the ideal middle ground between Burnout Paradise, Forza Horizon and 2010s NFS, and it looks pretty for the time.
Is it exceptional? No. But when it's this good, does it have to be?
I don't think so.