Game:

Motor Mayhem (2001)

Duration: 10:37

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3

If you ever think you're bad at your job, just remember, someone at Infogrames thought it was a great idea to release Motor Mayhem to store Shelves two days after Twisted Metal Black hit.

I picked this game not too long after it's release thanks to a PSM review that gave it high marks, and I was, at first, rather disappointed. This is a game I wanted to like more than I did at the time, and seeing the PSM Logo plastered throughout the game made the quid pro quo obvious, however, in playing this game for this very review, a strange thing happened, I've had a hard time putting this game down. In fact, though flawed in may ways, I've come away liking Motor Mayhem a lot more than I think I should.

I know that seems like a strange switch, a game I, at first, wanted to like, but ended up slightly disappointed with, now becomes a game I have come to like more than I wanted to. The game has some very obvious flaws, most notably the massive framerate dips, and floaty physics. When the action gets intense, the game dips at least into the teens at times, but never becomes a slideshow. It's massive frame dips can effect the already floaty feeling controls, already made less responsive than Twisted Metal's thanks to the over implemented physics engine.

In fact, to say this game feels like playing Twisted Metal with a moon gravity mutator on isn't an exaggeration. The game is extra floaty, and even bumping small corners can send you flying through the air, making even the smallest contact a much more complicated deal than it need be. You either float, or stop in your tracks.

The game also comes off as incredibly generic, from the characters to the weapons, to even the map designs. The whole game lacks any particular flavor of it's own. I would blame this partly on it taking the Unreal Tournament approach car combat.

When I booted up this game, playing through the single player all the way through with one of the characters, I was at first thinking I was going to say this is a flawed game that only forgiving gamers could get into, and that's actually true, even though I have come to like this game a lot, I can definitely say that with the framerate, and control issues, some might find this game to be unplayable. My first play-through didn't do much for me. I came out of it just as underwhelmed as I had been in the past.

I already had my mind made up on how I was going to review this game, but in order to make the review complete, I had to jump into the bot deathmatches just to mention how they were, I turned on six bots, knowing the framerate was going to tank, and chose a level that wasn't available in the single player, and sure enough, with all the carnage, the framerate tanked, however, for as bland as I found the single player experience to be, I had a blast playing the bot matches. I've always been a big fan of bot matches in first person shooters, and Motor Mayhem's bot multiplayer had the same effect on me. I could play these bot matches for hours, and that's exactly what I did. Different maps, dropping the bot count to three, changing the killcounts, it didn't matter, I was drawn into this game for hours.

I have come to enjoy the multiplayer mode in Motor Mayhem more than the ones in Twisted Metal Black, and Thunder Tanks. Simple, yet mayhem-filled, fun that I've lost hours to in the last two days.

While the framerate certainly has issues, I'm from the Goldeneye generation, and if we enjoyed 15 frames per second multiplayer in that game, I definitely enjoyed the incredible carnage in this game. I've had a lot more fun that I ever expected just playing the multiplayer, and it's too bad my highschool friends were such weenies they would only play games against me if they knew they could beat me, because we could have had a lot more fun with this game when I bought it.

Once you learn the combos, using each character's special attacks becomes an integral part of the game, and gives the combat a surprising amount of depth.

The Controls feel a bit loose, but the game's strange physics engine is far more of a hindrance to the controls than any amount of slowdown. They feel way too floaty, and the general physics in the game are wonky.

The Bottom Line: Motor Mayhem may have that Twisted Metal at home feel to it, coming off as generic overall, but coming back to it after all these years has helped me come to appreciate it a lot more than I thought I would. It's technical issues, and so-so single player keep this game from being an underrated or hidden Gem in my book, but I still had a ton of fun playing the Quick Brawl mode for some simple bot deathmatches. If you can look past the bland presentation, you can have a lot of fun fragging bots in this game. If you're not a bot deathmatch kind of person, or are looking for something the Quality of Twisted Metal, this game won't do anything for you.

#motormayhem #ps2games #twistedmetal