Drops of Wisdom

Gas Guzzlers Extreme

Many years ago, there used to be a old racing game called “DeathTrack”. It featured for the first time (that I know) a racing game that involves the racers shooting each others (as well as crashing into each other) with a variety of destructive weapons – from mounted shotguns, to missile launchers, as well as spikes on the wheel rims in order to puncture your opponent’s tires.

Good ol’ floppy disks

It was great fun at the time and really held a sense of excitement.

And now comes “Gas Guzzlers Extreme” – the 21st century virtual re-incarnation of the same game.

Graphics are slick, music is varied (from hillbilly tunes to german folk and metal), and the racing battles are ferocious as before, if not more so.

You start off with a certain amount of money that’s only gets you a basic clunker, but as you race, and if you win one of the first places, you make enough money to start to upgrade – first the car’s innards – engine, brakes, suspension, through weapon systems and such and even change the exterior using decals, color schemes and the like.

The game’s damage system is quite good, and damage shows on every part of the car. You cannot really “die” in the game, as even if your car gets totalled, you’ll just return to your garage – and hope you have enough money for repairs, or else you might need to scrap and start over.

The learning curve may be a bit steep. If you lose your place on the first 3 (and that may happen faster than you can anticipate, when guns and mines are involved), it may prove quite difficult to make your way up the chain, especially when you consider that all cars in a battle race hold the ability to look back, and shoot backwards.

The game allows six race modes:

Classic Race – Racing without weapons or power-ups (those items you may pick during your race for repairs and ammo as well as added arsenal items) – pure racing with no worries but getting there first

Power race – Another no weapons (but with power-ups) mode – gives a bit of a possible edge, still much less violence and explosions.

Battle race - This one allows you to use all weapons in your arsenal to thin out the weak. The rewards are higher than the other previous modes, as are the risks.

Knockout race – In this mode, the worst driver is eliminated from the race at the end of each lap, and the last remaining driver is the winner. The eliminated drivers get nothing but hurt pride.

DeathMatch – a game event where the player is required to score as many kills as possible. The match ends when the player reaches the max kills counter, or the time runs out. If you die you get to be respawned without weapons or power-ups but to continue the fight.

Last Man Standing – Similar to deathmatch, as you need to score as many kills and stay alive, but this time if you die you don’t get respawned and the last driver left is the winner.

You can spend hours on this addictive game. A word of warning: The developer has put an original protection scheme inside the game so that a pirated copy may begin to stutter in performance to the point where the game is close to unplayable – so try and support the game industry?

The game came out on October 2013, for PC.

I give it 8/10 for pure violent fun!