Carmageddon II: Carpocalypse Now
As Easy As Stamping On Kittens
Controversy sells, which was in ample supply for this game. Carmageddon was
a massive success. It's a fun game, so that success was well earned.
With massive success though, their is now the expectations for a worthy
followup. A squeal in inevitable. As a result, work on Carpocalyse Now
started.
The video game engine was much more refined, as Carpocalyse made use of more powerful hardware. The series was on Windows now, and could make more use of the capabilities of the 3DFX Voodoo accelerator via the Glide library. Instead of using sprites, the game use actual 3D polygon models for pedestrians now. In the past, 2D sprites were used because the hardware capabilities of PC's were still limited. However, PC's became ever more powerful, and Carmageddon would take advantage of those capabilities. More environmental effects were added, along with improvements in the car physics. Controlling the cars was a challenge in the first game, but significantly improved in this version.
Carpocalyse was released in late 1998 and was generally well-received. Like the first title, a lot of controversy was stirred up. The game was either banned or censored in several countries. Here in the U.S., Carpocalyse got a M rating. As with the first game, the PC version released in Germany replaced the human pedestrians with aliens and in other countries, with zombies. Since this was the beginning of the Internet age though, "blood-packs" were released that removed the censured content and restored the blood and the human pedestrians.
The video game engine was much more refined, as Carpocalyse made use of more powerful hardware. The series was on Windows now, and could make more use of the capabilities of the 3DFX Voodoo accelerator via the Glide library. Instead of using sprites, the game use actual 3D polygon models for pedestrians now. In the past, 2D sprites were used because the hardware capabilities of PC's were still limited. However, PC's became ever more powerful, and Carmageddon would take advantage of those capabilities. More environmental effects were added, along with improvements in the car physics. Controlling the cars was a challenge in the first game, but significantly improved in this version.
Carpocalyse was released in late 1998 and was generally well-received. Like the first title, a lot of controversy was stirred up. The game was either banned or censored in several countries. Here in the U.S., Carpocalyse got a M rating. As with the first game, the PC version released in Germany replaced the human pedestrians with aliens and in other countries, with zombies. Since this was the beginning of the Internet age though, "blood-packs" were released that removed the censured content and restored the blood and the human pedestrians.
Like in the first Carmageddon,
one could play the game as a traditional racing game. One can also
destroy the opponents in vehicular combat or mowing down as many
pedestrians as possible. One of the trade-offs was that because actual
3D polygon models used more processing power, their were fewer
pedestrians in the squeal than compared to the first game.
Despite this though, with the improved graphics and gameplay, Carpolcalyse is often regarded as the definite game in the series. I remember playing this game back on my dad's computer back in the day. His PC had a AMD K6-2 running at 415MHz with the Voodoo Accelerator and a Cirrus Logic SVGA adapter (the 3DFX Voodoo couldn't do 2D drawing operations, thus needing to be pared with a SVGA video adapter. Those were the days.)
I recently revisited this game while testing the gaming capabilities of VMware Player. I was not disappointed. I ran the game under VMware with a 32-bit Windows 7 guest with 3D acceleration enabled. NGlide was installed as well. I was reliving the tail-end of the 90's. If interested, one will have to enable the compatibility settings. Mine is set to "Windows 98/Me" with the checkbox "Run in 640 by 480 screen resolution" enabled.
For those that don't want to deal with compatibility settings, GOG does sell this game as well with those patches already applied. According to the website, the game is compatible with Windows 10.
Despite this though, with the improved graphics and gameplay, Carpolcalyse is often regarded as the definite game in the series. I remember playing this game back on my dad's computer back in the day. His PC had a AMD K6-2 running at 415MHz with the Voodoo Accelerator and a Cirrus Logic SVGA adapter (the 3DFX Voodoo couldn't do 2D drawing operations, thus needing to be pared with a SVGA video adapter. Those were the days.)
I recently revisited this game while testing the gaming capabilities of VMware Player. I was not disappointed. I ran the game under VMware with a 32-bit Windows 7 guest with 3D acceleration enabled. NGlide was installed as well. I was reliving the tail-end of the 90's. If interested, one will have to enable the compatibility settings. Mine is set to "Windows 98/Me" with the checkbox "Run in 640 by 480 screen resolution" enabled.
For those that don't want to deal with compatibility settings, GOG does sell this game as well with those patches already applied. According to the website, the game is compatible with Windows 10.
Retrospective
Like the first
Carmageddon, I had a lot of fun with this one too. At hte same time,
once those 15 minute burst of fun, the game does start to feel dull,
like the first title as well. It didn't have involving gameplay. Like
the first title, this game still draws heavily from arcade elements
Despite this though, Carpocalypse is still loads of fun, and a game
definitely worth playing.
Carmageddon II: Carpocalypse Now
WIKIPEDIA
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Carmageddon II: Carpocalypse Now
Fandom
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Carmageddon 2: Carpocalypse Now
GOG
WWW.GOG.COM
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