Let me tell you a Greenlight story. One that should feel awfully familiar by now. Gamepires, a small development team from Croatia, put their first game, Gas Guzzlers: Combat Carnage, on Steam’s beauty pageant service shortly after launch. Combat Carnage was in Greenlight limbo for almost a year without making much progress before Gamepires gave up and pulled the self-funded game. Despite the generally warm critical reception, it failed to gain traction which is a common thing these days. Too many fish in that particular sea, and not enough people willing to browse and vote for all of these games. For their upcoming sequel, Gas Guzzlers Extreme, Gamepires didn’t go the Greenlight route. Instead, they partnered up with Iceberg Interactive as publisher, and thanks to this publishing deal, the new game will be available to buy from Steam in just a few weeks.
In spite of the similar sounding name and sharing most of Combat Carnage’s features, this is a completely new game, built from the ground up. Just as before, its focus is on multiplayer combat racing which supports up to eight players in customizable tournaments. You’re free to pick and choose your particular multiplayer poison and build a track list – no pun intended – however you desire. There are 6 different gameplay modes, from classic racing to deathmatch or even capture the flag. Gamepires is especially proud of their CTF gameplay, where two teams face off in wide open spaces, with lots of different weapons strewn about the battlefield. Trying to develop “the Quake Team Arena of the combat racing world,” as Creative Director Tomislav Pongrac put it, certainly sounds ambitious, but they just might be able to do that. It’s not like there is a lot of competition in this particular genre, anyway.
Of course, all the cars are fully destroyable. It’s no wonder that Flatout 2, with its semi-arcade car-physics, came up as another reference when I talked to the developers at Gamescom. I also tried the various game modes and can attest that they convey the good old Destruction Derby feelings of yore. Racing around the more than 40 different tracks and arenas is good fun. The shooting feels just right, even if you’re not able to rotate the mounted turrets. You can only fire straight forward and backwards… unless you pick up some homing missiles, that is.
The only thing which might take some getting used to is the way Gas Guzzlers handles braking. Using a gamepad, handbrake is left stick up, normal brakes are left stick down. Since you’ll also be using the same stick for steering, this is needlessly complicated. It’s not as bad in the open arenas, but for regular or combat racing it feels awkward to initiate a drifting maneuver in a sharp bend. With all other buttons having a function assigned to them, it looks like you cannot change this. Of course, you’re not bound to playing with a gamepad; you can also use a dedicated steering wheel controller or other input methods.
There are also persistent ranks that are supposed to enrich your online experience. I’m not quite sure what they add apart from bragging rights, since upgrades to your car are bought with money earned during the races. You won’t get any experience when playing offline, but thankfully there’s the option to populate a multiplayer server with bots you can race against. Given how many smaller racing games are leading a miserable, player-less existence out there, that’s a good thing for Gamepires. With all the features Gas Guzzlers Extreme is touting – full Steam integration, leaderboards, achievement, and ranks – maybe this game can escape such a fate. In any case, we will soon find out, because Gas Guzzlers Extreme is set to launch on October 8.
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jc
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Adam Ames
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