Available on

PSN!

Platform

Playstation 3

Genre

Racing

Publisher

Targem Games

Developer

Targem Games

ESRB

M (Mature)

Released

June 3, 2011

- Lots of hours of carmageddon mayhem killing zombies and engaging in large and small-scale demolition derbies
- Plenty of variety of main and side missions, including a lot of trophy objectives

- No online multiplayer, which could have really extended the gameplay
- Repetitive and eclectic music can get to be annoying after a while

Review: Duke Nukem Forever (360)

Review: Pure (PC)

Review: Split/Second (360)

Newsletter

Be notified of site updates. Sign-up for the Newsletter sent out twice weekly.

Enter E-Mail Address Below:

Armageddon Riders

Score: 7.5 / 10

Those Atom City scientists just couldn’t resist playing dangerous games with their newfound toy, the giant collider. And the inevitable happened when scientists start playing with fire. No, not the black hole that would suck the entire earth into a death-knell vortex that many predicted. But they did unleash a zombie-causing “malfunction.” So, for those Atom City residents that somehow are resistant to the zombie virus, there’s only one thing to do: get behind the wheel of a variety of vehicles around town, the Atom City port and the collider itself and unleash

Advertisement

- Playstation 3 Game Reviews
- Racing Game Reviews

carmageddon mayhem on those zombies wandering around Atom City and its surroundings in the PSN downloadable title for the PS3, Armageddon Riders.

One-quarter Burnout Paradise, one-quarter Twisted Metal, another quarter Demolition Derby and a final quarter of Left For Dead, Armageddon Riders is a wacky and warped take on the

Advertisement

racing game, which is the main gameplay element. While many of the missions are race-based, there’s quite a variety of other missions, with the most deviously fun being the zombie-clearing activities. Gamers race their vehicle of choice (all generic vehicles, from super-fast roadsters to Hummer types to a huge dozer, many of which can be upgraded with boosters and shockers and zombie-grinding body kits) and plow through the multitude of zombies, leaving a bloody wake of zombie splattered body parts and blood everywhere.

There are power-ups along the way that boost speed and health, too, and a rather hilarious one: Dance Madness, where a disco floor pops up with about 25 zombies line-dancing that gamers can run over and score cash – needed to upgrade those vehicles. All zombies aren’t that easy to kill, however. Many zombies decide your fleshy non-zombie-ness is just to appetizingly delicious to just let zoom past, and some will jump on your vehicle and try any way they can to smash through gamers’ windshield or door and start feasting on them. Many cars can be upgraded with a shocker, which, by vigorously shaking the PS3 controller to activate the shocker, sends a zombie-killing shockwave over the vehicle and tossing the would-be zombie meal-seekers off onto the asphalt. Doing drifts and careening into walls will also loosen that zombie grip on the vehicle, too.

In the latter collider levels, which are ridiculously hard, especially the races, those upgraded-to-the-max vehicles, including the shockers, are an absolute must. It’s not just zombie that pose threats, either. Similar to WipeOut or Twisted Metal, other drivers can be eliminated by destroying their vehicles, and in fact, a few mission require the other drivers to be destroyed until there’s only three left (missions are completed as long as a gamer gets a first, second or third-place finish). There are also “protect” missions where an AI ally collects artifacts, while gamers fend off attacking enemy vehicles.

There are also Demolition Derby-style arenas where you must smash and incapacitate fellow car-smashing survivors of the zombie apocalypse. The more robust and bigger vehicles come in particularly handy in the “smash’em, mash’em up” arenas.

Collecting hidden artifacts and unlocking new vehicles and accompanying skins are various incentives to continue playing Armageddon Riders and unlocking the selection of PS3 trophies. It will take about 10 hours of gameplay to completely finish all the main and side missions and also unlock all the trophies, an impressive amount of gaming time for the price, although there is no online play that could have really extended the gameplay time immensely.

Making navigating around the rather large-scale environs of Atom City is a reliably easy map navigation system, although like Grand Theft Auto IV, when too many icons clutter the screen it can get a bit confusing what you’re actually heading toward. And the eclectic music that gamers will hear gets distracting somewhat in its annoying catchiness while roaming around Atom City in search of zombies to flatten or items to collect. Graphically, Atom City isn’t too detailed even though it’s really far-reaching, although the vehicles are more high quality in their visual appearance.

If you have to suffer through a zombie armageddon, there’s no better way to pass the time until the doomsday clock reaches midnight than unleashing carnage on the PS3 with the apocalyptically action-packed need-for-killing-speed enjoyment of Armageddon Riders.

- Lee Cieniawa
lcieniawa@armchairempire.com

(July 19, 2011)