I don’t think that there is anything that car insurance agents have nightmares about more than big car wrecks. On the flipside, I don’t know what I enjoy more than seeing people take perfectly good automobiles and driving them into each other in a tangled mess of parts and twisted metal until only one is left running. That’s right, it’s demolition racing. Games like Demolition Racer and Destruction Derby have come out on consoles over the years to glorify many people’s urges of smashing vehicles together, and now Global Star Software is looking to enter the dirt arena with Ultimate Demolition Derby for the PC.

UDD consists of your typical smash ‘em up auto fest, complete with nine different car models and four different race modes to play with in four separate arenas. Smash Race pits you against your opponents in a checkpoint style run to the finish, Stunt Track allows you to take your vehicle into a set amount of leaps and obstacles by awarding time for successful completion of each area, Massacre puts you and your opponents to the test by seeing who can score the most hits and survive, and Arena unleashes 6 drivers in an obstacle filled area until only one is left running.

Other than just wrecking and blowing opponents up, you can also pick up powerups along the way to help turn the tide in your favor. You can get blocks to help your traction, wheel spikes to help with more damage, and even rocket thrusters to boost up your speed to help you really knock the heck out of an opponent’s driver’s side door or back end.

While it may seem like UDD offers enough to keep the smashfest fanatic happy, it unfortunately falls short in a couple of different areas. For starters, keyboard control is pretty good, and is the more enjoyable way to play. I personally like using my Century Concept Digital gamepad, but had to quickly ditch it since steering on the device was so loose that the race modes were unplayable. While this may not be horrible for a lot of players, gamers like me who don’t like to use the keyboard for a racing game can get annoyed.

Secondly, there really doesn’t seem like a lot to do overall, and you can see pretty much all of the areas of the game in about 30 minutes. While there were some neat environments, like a hardware store parking lot, cityscape, and a soccer field (complete with ball and goals), the fun of the environments quickly gets forgotten as you simply loop around the arenas trying to hit the 5 other competitors. Add to this the fact that a lot of things don’t make sense … like getting blown up in two hits when you get landed on while your opponent remains uninjured when you do it to them … and it just adds to the frustration and possible boredom.

Lastly, the graphics and sound were not up to what I would expect from a smash ‘em up arena title. While environments had some neat ideas to them as mentioned above, they also looked very outdated and a little boring overall. Also, cars took no body damage as they went about crashing into each other, but instead would just keep losing parts off the frame. Basically, you could get sideswiped, and the flat looking car panels would remain just as they were unless they were made to drop off.

Overall, UDD may be a neat thing to mess with if you just get in that “I have 15 minutes before school and HAVE to destroy a vehicle before I go” mode, but if you’re looking for a solid car crashing title … this is probably not it. If you are considering picking it up, I would recommend seeing if you can download a demo or hang onto the receipt just in case. 

Gameplay: 5.9
While keyboard controls were decent, playing with a gamepad was unbearable in race modes. There are four different arenas to race or crash in, and some neat ideas like massacre and arena, but overall the repetitive gameplay and annoying collision detection quickly got dull. The car selection was kind of neat, but there are no stats to separate one from the other … nor did one really feel any different from the others either.

Graphics: 5.4
Cool landscape ideas like a parking lot, city, soccer field, and a construction zone were overshadowed by dull looking and outdated style graphics. The car models were a little neater, but the flat colors and lack of any kind of car body damage (other than panels falling off) didn’t add to any of the crashes or feeling like you were really doing anything other than occasionally causing gray triangles to fly around when hit.

Sound: 5.0
The sound consists mostly of repetitive and generic rock tracks and voiceovers are corny and repeat over and over again. The announcer doesn’t really add anything either by stating the same lines over and over either which just fits right in with the drivers. The collision noises are weak thuds, and engine noises all seemed to sound mostly the same.

Difficulty: Medium
Not really difficult to play, but the fact that collisions tend to be unfair a lot of times makes it a little more frustrating than it needs to be.

Concept: 5.9

The idea of crashing cars is fun, and some of the arena and track designs were good ideas (like flipping stunt tracks, etc). Unfortunately the repetitive gameplay, weak detail, and less than average sound just drag it down overall.

Multiplayer: N/A

There is a multiplayer LAN ability, but I had no LAN to connect it to or try out.

Overall: 5.5

While game ideas can be good, they don’t always turn out to be what was expected. For fans of demolition derby and racing games, you will probably want to download a demo or see if your local retailer has a return policy if you decide to try this out. For those of you who aren’t fans, this probably won’t make you into one. Buy with caution.