Author: sick skills

In a cruel twist of irony, those of us who remember the breakneck mayhem of the original Carmageddon are creeping ever closer to our senior citizen bus pass. This will allow us to ride a slow-moving passenger vehicle that gains no extra points for mulching pedestrians.

Released in 1997, this classic of vehicular combat arrived with some critical praise and instant controversy. Deliberately baiting outrage with its points-for-murder gameplay, it was banned in some countries and heavily censored in others. A huge hit regardless of backlash, it spawned many sequels, ports, and imitators over the years.

Developers 34BigThings (Redout) are bringing the franchise back from the dead for a new generation, adding a roguelite spin in the process. Carmageddon: Rogue Shift is just as fun and addictive as the original was back in the day, though it’s a little too lightweight to be truly great.

In keeping with the setting, theme, and tone of the series, this new Carmageddon populates its tracks with zombies and mutants for competitors to mow down in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Alongside the Roger Corman-produced Death Race 2000, the series has always drawn inspiration from the Mad Max franchise (it started life as a licensed adaptation, but publisher SCI couldn’t get the rights). Rogue Shift manages to capture the blood, chrome, and chaos of those films far better than it ever could in the ’90s. Everything has a wasteland punk aesthetic, presenting a world where the need to blow each other up on a high-speed circuit is a believable way to let off steam.

A racing game in the thinnest sense, Carmageddon’s focus is firmly on high-speed destruction derby action. You shoot other cars to scrap while careening around makeshift courses, racking up credits by mowing down the irradiated denizens of this savage wasteland.

Tracks are bonkers obstacle gauntlets, littered with swinging wrecking balls and flailing tentacles. Hordes of shambling undead and giant mutants that explode into clouds of acid conspire to sabotage your pole position.

The handling model can be best described as ‘slip ‘n slide’. Every vehicle has a weight to it and you’ll mostly be swinging it around corners, hoping you don’t clip some scenery and spin out. It can be frustrating to force a respawn after hitting a wall at max acceleration, but a perfect lap feels exhilarating once you nail it.

Rather than the Mario Kart approach of picking up weapons mid-race, your loadout is fixed. Each car comes equipped with a starting weapon, ranging from machine guns to lasers and everything in between. Your vehicle itself is a sub-weapon, with an effective slam ability that lets you violently shunt opponents into barriers. Seeing rivals explode in slow motion as point multipliers flash up on screen never gets old.

As entertaining as this metal-on-metal carnage is, it is a loop that lacks lasting appeal. That is where the roguelite elements come in. You start a new game and work through a series of randomly generated events, each with their own primary and bonus goals.

Events range from straightforward races, survival, and combat-focused challenges. There are also boss fights against cars packing uniquely destructive offence. The aim is to get as far as possible without being damaged beyond repair. Death sends you back to the start, but not empty-handed. You earn a currency — amusingly called beatcoin — to spend on new cars, weapons and store stock for the next run.

Each cycle offers the chance to try a new rig with a fresh set of stats and weaponry. Upgrades and repairs are available during a run, but difficulty ramps up at a steady pace. Early deaths are almost guaranteed in the first few attempts.

The unlock system does a good job of encouraging replay. It’s hard to walk away after a defeat when a massive truck with a shotgun bolted to it is waiting to be pulled out of the garage.

Yet even with the steady supply of new equipment, upgrades and vehicles, Rogue Shift struggles to hold attention over the long haul. Track fatigue sets in before long, and no amount of random generation can fully offset that.

It doesn’t help that the game is solo only. This style of combat racer feels tailor-made for local and online multiplayer. Quick time to kill, rapid respawns, and short tracks are designed for spectacle rather than precision. Not being able to ram a friend into an oncoming pack of exploding mutants feels like a glaring omission.

That absence stings because Rogue Shift has a sense of fluid speed that arguably has not been seen since Switch 2 launch title Fast Fusion, which arrived with a full multiplayer suite.

It’s also a well-optimised version. Frame rates remain stable even during visually chaotic moments, when the screen fills with flying cars and mutant hordes. Undocked play has a surprisingly sharp fidelity, with splashes of colour and blurred neon lighting recalling the impressive Night City driving of Cyberpunk 2077. The only technical hiccup of note was some occasional input lag when docked, which was infrequent and brief.

Conclusion

An explosive return from this 30-year-old franchise, Carmageddon: Rogue Shift is close to being the full package. It’s one of those rare reboots that can satisfy older fans while also appealing to newer players drawn to the roguelite loop. It’s fast, entertaining, and backed by a teeth-rattling heavy metal soundtrack.

It’s a shame, then, that there isn’t more of it. With no multiplayer and no additional content announced, Rogue Shift starts strong and shows real promise, but it ultimately runs out of gas.

I’m of the opinion that there are no bad Yakuza games. Although the series has definitely fluctuated in quality over the years, they always offer up something to keep me engaged and satisfied. Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties is still a decent entry, but it’s also bloated, poorly paced, and marred in controversy surrounding the recasting of a key character. Frankly, I’d argue that RGG’s prolificacy is starting to have an impact on the quality of its games, and it might be time to take a break.

Much like the previous Kiwami titles, this is a remake of the 2009 PS3 original, continuing the story of protagonist Kazuma Kiryu as the story shifts over to the new location of Downtown Ryukyu in Okinawa. The new setting offers a nice change of pace, leaning more towards a kind of tropical, resort-style environment. At a glance, it’s lovely to look at with the series’ signature attention to detail all intact, though you might be wondering whether the lighting issues from the demo have been addressed.

Well, the good news is that they absolutely have in a pre-release patch. There was a particularly egregious issue in which the area around Kubochi River looked genuinely awful, with the river itself showcasing a bright blue colour that somehow made the environment look worse than the original. This has been fixed, and it looks pretty good now. I did notice a weird bug early on in which some code was displayed in the dialogue subtitles, but this seems to have been a one-off, and otherwise it’s a pretty polished experience.

Overall performance on Switch 2 is also as solid as you’d hope. The bump up to the Dragon Engine means we’re looking at 30fps, but it remains pretty stable throughout. Resolution can also look a touch fuzzy in handheld mode, as you’ll no doubt see in the accompanying screenshots here, but its overall a really handsome-looking game.

As for the gameplay, you’re looking at a familiar mix of melee combat (lots of melee combat), exploration, side activities like bowling, darts, and karaoke, and some light customisation features.

Focusing on combat first and foremost, Kiryu’s iconic Dragon Style makes a return, and it’s just as satisfying as ever. What’s more, the devs wisely made it so that your enemies no longer block incessantly, making emergent fights as you explore the environment much less irritating than the original.

New to Kiwami 3 is the Ryukyu Style, which focuses on weapon combat like scythes, shields, and all sorts of weird and wonderful objects that Kiryu just happens to have stashed in his pockets. The basic functionality is the same as the Dragon Style, with standard attacks mapped to ‘Y’ and stronger ones mapped to ‘X’, combinations of which result in some pretty sick moves. Overall, I still tend to prefer the Dragon Style, as the dodging mechanic is a bit more immediate and satisfying, but both are valid options.

Like previous Yakuza games, random gangs can start fights with you while you’re out and about, but you can avoid these if you wish. What’s new here are Baddie Battles, which are large-scale scraps with a bunch of goons and one stronger foe as part of the new Bad Boy Dragon mode. This also sees you take over parts of Okinawa via motorbike skirmishes, and overall, it’s a fun little distraction that leans heavily into the series’ penchant for absurdity.

Other side missions focus primarily on the new Morning Glory orphanage (yeah, it’s not a good name, I know), during which you raise your ‘Daddy Rank’ by helping out the children in various minigames like cooking and fishing. The original release made a lot of the orphanage section mandatory to progress the story, but Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio has wisely restructured the flow of the narrative to make this stuff more optional.

That said, Kiwami 3 still suffers from poor pacing throughout. At its height (Yakuza 0), the series has managed to strike a decent balance between story progression and side content, but here, there’s just simply too much stuff. You’re constantly being bombarded with cutscenes and random pedestrian dialogue, to check out features for your phone, buy some new threads, and much more. Some might relish all of the extra content, but in my opinion, Kiwami 3 tips the scales too much, and it often feels like a chore to play.

You’ve also got the completely new side campaign called ‘Dark Ties’, and this stars the fan-favourite antagonist Yoshitaka Mine as he goes from ousted chairman of an upstart company to ruthless Yakuza lieutenant. In contrast to the main story, this takes place almost entirely within the iconic Kamurocho, and so feels like a more ‘traditional’ Yakuza experience compared to Kiryu’s narrative. It’s also a little more streamlined, offering a nice antidote to the bloated main story.

Mine is a compelling character, too. His calculating, no-nonsense attitude remains engaging throughout, though I have to admit that his task in raising the reputation of fellow clan member Tsuyoshi Kanda is disappointing given just how unlikeable the latter is. You’ll need to complete a bunch of missions to raise Kanda’s rank, including dealing with street bullies, accompanying him to a local brothel, or even just winning a plushie on a UFO catcher.

During combat, Mine is noticeably more brutal than Kiryu, with slightly slower movement balanced by hard-hitting punches. Building up a gauge will also eventually let you unleash Dark Awakening, which can be boosted two or three times in one go if you’ve managed to build up enough energy. Naturally, this increases Mine’s strength further and introduces a few cinematic finishing moves which, honestly, never get old. Overall, his fighting style is a delight, and I think I might even prefer it to Kiryu’s Dragon Style.

You’ll need to make good use of Mine’s abilities, too, since a key feature within Dark Ties sees you navigate a series of labyrinths in the Hell’s Arena underground fight club – yes, it’s as ridiculous as it sounds. These are stuffed with treasure to find and bad guys to vanquish, all leading to a thrilling one-on-one fight with the labyrinth’s leader. It’s good stuff, and it makes for a nice break from the persistent jobs you need to complete on the surface to help out Kanda.

I mentioned Kanda is unlikeable, and this is largely because his introduction sees him forcing himself upon a woman in an alley. As Mine, you have to intervene, which makes their subsequent alliance somewhat repulsive. I bring this up because RGG Studio made the decision to recast a key character in the main game, enlisting actor Teruyuki Kagawa to provide the voice and likeness for antagonist Goh Hamazaki.

The reasoning for replacing the original actor, George Takahashi, is unclear. However, in 2022, replacement actor Kagawa admitted to accusations of sexual misconduct from 2019, leading to massive fan backlash over his inclusion in Kiwami 3.

Now, if Kagawa’s inclusion here means you decide to skip this entirely, I wouldn’t blame you in the slightest. The series often deals with themes of horrific men being terrible to women, so his addition feels hypocritical of RGG Studio, and it did affect my enjoyment of the game every time Hamazaki shows up.

Ultimately, however, even if this wasn’t an issue, Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties is still the weakest entry for the Switch 2 so far. It feels like we’re being bombarded with new titles in the series recently, and I genuinely wonder whether RGG should just pull back slightly and focus on what made it so great to begin with.

Conclusion

Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties is a fair series entry, but one that’s tainted by poor pacing and a recasting controversy that simply didn’t need to happen. The main story has a lot to offer, but it’s also bloated with way too much side content getting in the way of the core narrative. Dark Ties feels like a nice antidote to this, but I’m not sure whether this alone would be worth the purchase for anyone but series die-hards.

RGG Studio fixed some visual blemishes in time for launch, so that’s good news. Unfortunately, it seems Kiwami 3 will forever be associated with the recasting of one of its main antagonists, a controversy that undeniably affected my personal enjoyment of the game. If that doesn’t bother you, and if an overabundance of side content appeals, you could probably add a point to the scoreline.