Cross Platform Gamers

Gas Guzzlers does two things, lets you drive fast and lets you shoot vehicle mounted weapons while you do it. If one or both things sounds like fun to you, read on. The concept of Gass Guzzlers is not a hard one to grasp. Essentially it’s a racing game with weapons. One part Need for Speed and one part Twisted Metal. Driving in the game is pretty tight and as a player you’ll have to leave drive with a fair amount of precision to be able to be successful in the game. The game really takes a while to get use to the driving and at times can be downright difficult, as the AI is always on your tail or putting pressure on you, but give it some time and it can really be a fun experience. The addition of weapons are a blast, no pun intended. My favorite one to use was the shotguns. At close range, I loved  hitting the tail end of a car with them and making them lose control. With the smaller cars, if I timed my shots right I was able to spin them to the side and then flip their car, which is totally satisfying when you’re speed down the road at 100 mph. Players can also equip missiles, mini guns, and machine guns to their cars as well. 

Singleplayer in the game seems to lack a scene of structure, but works well if you just want to drive races. In singleplayer you complete to become the top ranked driver throughout the course of multiple races. Players can chose from a classic race ( no weapons, and in my opinion boring), Battle mode (driving with weapons), and knockout. I personally enjoyed knockout the most because it was the most challenging race types. In knockout the last person at the end of the lap is “blown up” and last player left wins it all.  I enjoyed the mode, but I wished the game gave you more ranking points for a perfect run on it. Winning was 2 points where first in Battle mode was 3 points. Being successful in knockout took more skills then in battle mode and should be worth more points, in my opinion. Starting off in singleplayer is a challenge. Your starting car is a real piece of junk and you don’t get any weapons until you place in the race. It took me about an hour to get use to the driving before I was able to place and unlock access to weapons, new cars, and upgrades. Once that happened the game became  a little easier and more fun. The game does have a multiplayer mode but unfortunately there are only two servers up and they are totally empty. When I tried to join my game crashed to the desktop. If you had a friend who you can connect to them via IP address, but I wasn’t able to test out this connection mode.

Graphically the game looks amazing. I ran everything on high and the game looks spectacular with little to no slow downs. When I was picking my cars they almost looked photo-realistic. Watching light and reflections of the environment within the cars looked great. In-game the world enviroments were rich and beautiful as well. Through the course of the race my car began to look more and more trashed. When I lost control and smashed into a wall, my car then had a huge mashed in side. Car damage seems to have been done well, which you could only expect in a game subtitled Combat Carnage.

I was able to preview this game before it’s full release, and during that playthrough the character voice overs were riddled with profanity which really didn’t seem to fit with the game. At the start of the game by default voice overs are turned off, but I can only assume they have the same vugar language when turned on. Another content issues I came across when playing the game is a during one race, a blow up doll was places in the hatch back of my car. I giggled a little bit, but it’s not something I would want to explain to my son if he was around watching me play. 

All in all Gas Guzzlers can be a fun game if you take the time to get the hang of it. The driving can be difficult and unforgiving at times, but you can’t pass up racing and blasting people with shotguns.  If you are in the mood for speed and mayhem Gas Guzzlers will give you your fix.

Want a little fix of speed and mayhem? Try the demo!