Let's Talk... Gas Guzzlers Extreme

You'd think that games where cars strapped with oversized miniguns and rocket launchers fight to the death would be the kind of game that is just impossible to mess up. It takes quite a bit of effort to make cars blowing each other up not fun, but somehow Gas Guzzlers makes it feel like a chore and although it's not fair to say that Gas Guzzlers is downright bad, it just gets boring really quickly. The game tries too hard to distract you from its weak driving and underwhelming combat with it's over the top music, the inclusion of Duke Nukem and Arnold Schwarzenegger  voice-overs, and yet another pointless "Unreal guy" impersonator. Gas Guzzlers wacky carnage will certainly appeal to some fans of games like Vigilante, and for $20 you could do a lot worse.

The game does a good job of simulating speed, it's just shame the cars feel so sluggish

The worse thing you can say about a racing game is that the driving feels sluggish and heavy, which is exactly how I would describe the driving in this game. Cars feel more like immobile bricks than cars, and moving in any direction other than forward is far too awkward than it should be for a game that tries to emphasise speed and mobility. The cars you later unlock generally feel lighter and more agile, but you'll get bored long before you've actually manage to unlock a car that feels suitable for the pace of the game, and the cars that are actually good and fun to use take even longer. There are also Mario Kart power-ups and tools to generally inconvenience your opponents, such as a blinding cloud of smoke and oil that slows cars that go through it. Once again, these feel pointless and unnecessary, you have no control over where they go or even who they hit which just leaves you hoping for the best and unleashing whatever you've got.

It honestly feels like Gas Guzzlers was, at one point, just a racing game but the developers realised how dull it was and proceeded to slap miniguns and rocket launchers and a load of dumb voice overs to make it seem a lot more exciting. The weapons generally feel weak and extremely underwhelming, they sound pathetic and it's usually pretty difficult to successfully aim at cars that aren't directly in front of you. Also, there are so many repair kits that restore a car's health which makes it damn near impossible to die yourself and the AI are pretty efficient at catching repair kits. So in a game that emphasises excitement, speed, and exploding cars, so few cars actually explode and it's not uncommon to finish a race without anybody dying. Which just makes the weapons feel like an unnecessary addition, the game would continue to function as a semi-competent racer that has been done much better in the past. It's pretty concerning when a game's main selling point is something that only weakens the game... oh, and there's nitro as well, as if that hasn't been done before.

There's a decent amount of car variation, but getting to the fun ones take far too long

The game features a campaign mode, where you progress through leagues and cups earning money to purchase new cars, upgrades, and weapons. Each cup is fairly lengthy, often requiring you to win a fair amount of races in order to progress onto the next cup, and cups have a habit of dragging on longer than they should. A quick race mode and a multiplayer mode give you other options outside of the campaign, but you need to have unlocked cars and weapons in the campaign to be able to freely use them, which can make finding a decent car feel a like a really painful and slow grind. There are seven tracks and seven game modes, all of which are just slight variations of "drive and fight" and the tracks at all interesting or exciting. The multiplayer is quite fun, its certainly a lot more entertaining than the single player elements, and some of the custom game types and tracks offer far more interesting gameplay, including a straight up arena deathmatch.

Thankfully, from a technical standpoint the game isn't a total failure, the game generally looks pretty nice for a $20 game, with some nice shiny car models and quite good looking tracks. It doesn't run too great, though, I experienced a number of frame rate drops on pretty low-med settings. The sound design isn't too great, however, cars generally sound pretty good and reasonably fast, but weapons sound as weak as they feel and the ridiculously over the top music and dumb voice overs quickly become as tiresome as the game itself. The game controls quite well, thankfully, it has full controller support but it's perfectly playable with a keyboard. Although the controls feel fine, you'd be forgiven for mistaking the feel of the horribly immobile cars for bad controls, as it often feels like taking corners is significantly more difficult than it should be.