9 Games that Made Vehicular Manslaughter Fun
- January 07, 2009 19:07 PM PST
- Email this!
5- Death Race
Death Race on the NES (not to be confused with the ancient arcade game by the same name) makes it onto our list as one of the earliest examples of a video game that allowed players to satisfyingly strike down people down by rolling over them in your vehicle. Inspired by the original cheesy sci-fi film Death Race, which starred David Carradine (Kill Bill) and Slyvester Stallone, Death Race had players racing on different tracks in US cities while mashing pedestrians before the timer ran out. One of the coolest things about the game happened if the timer actually did run out, in which case a hail of missiles would automatically blow your vehicle to kingdom come.
4- Dead Rising
While it's plenty fun to mutilate the undead with hedge clippers and shower heads, you haven't truly committed a zombie massacre until you've taken a car into the underground parking area of the Williamette Mall. By nabbing a car in the outdoor lot adjacent to the underground one, you can take your sportscar on a spin through a sea of zombies below the mall, killing dozens of them every second. In fact, one of the game's most notorious achievements, Zombie Genocider, is best tackled by plowing through zombies non-stop, hopping from car to car. We can only hope that the upcoming Wii version of Dead Rising, Chop Till You Drop, offer similar vehicular thrills.
3- Unreal Tournament 2004
What better method to mow down your opponents than with the help of multiple decapitations and happy little accidents? The vehicles of choice that are relentless in the pursuit of enemies are Unreal Tournament 2004's Scorpion dune buggy and the Manta hovercraft. While the navigation of the Scorpion can be a bit unwieldy--sometimes inadvertently running over teammates--the razor-sharp retractable twin-blades are sure to take out anyone in its path of destruction. And nothing is more sastifying than running over the opposing team at full speed than the bone-crushing joy of forming human waffles via UT2K4's Manta hovercraft. As if landing flat on the heads of your enemies is not enough, players can even launch and abandon the vehicle at any given target, gaining stylistic stunt points for that unforgettable killing spree.
2- Carmageddon
How could we compile a list of the greatest video games to maul human beings in without including the mother of all vehicular-manslaughtering simulators? In the Carmageddon games, not only are you encouraged to heartlessly splatter as many pedestrians as possible with your vehicle while racing around a track, you're also awarded points for smashing into them in "artistic" ways like pancaking their bodies in between the front of your vehicle and the side of a building. And if crushing old ladies with walkers, businessmen, bums, clowns, and lumberjacks wasn't demented enough for you, you can also kill elephants, deer, Dobermans, penguins, and numerous other animals.
1- Grand Theft Auto Series
Whether in 2D or 3D, on the PS1, GBA, or Xbox 360, there's no denying that Grand Theft Auto has been the standard bearer for vehicular manslaughter. The simple 2D bloodsplats of yesteryear have evolved amazingly into the hard-hitting high-def car-on-citizen collisions you see in Grand Theft Auto IV. Saints Row and the like may ably imitate GTA, but the series is still the best around, as are its automobile-aided fatalities. While the upcoming downloadable expansion, The Lost and Damned, is motorcycle-focused, we're confident there'll be a few new four-wheeled vehicles coming to GTA to wreak havoc with.
Special thanks to Ivy Yup for her Unreal Tournament 2004 expertise.
- Previous Page Prev
- Next Page Next
- 1
- 2
More Top GamePro Stories
Comments [24]
-
- Jump To Page:
- [ 1 ]
- 2
- 3
- 3
-
- Jan 07 2009 at 07:48:43:PM PST
-
Man 2 articals includeing Carmageddon in just a few week's make me miss the good old day's of running into that football stadium and running down the whole team. . . . Man I wish there was some way to find that game now a day's.
- Vote:
- Down
- Up
- +0
- report user
Correction: Twisted Metal dropped the ability to kill pedestrians after the second game. I never played the first one, and I clearly remember running them down in the second.
- Vote:
- Down
- Up
- +0
- report user
Either way, isn't it more satisfying to waste a baddie, or even just a random pedestrian, than shoot them?
- Vote:
- Down
- Up
- +0
- report user
Running down people with cars in a video game = win. It got a little boring doing it for over an hour to get the Dead Rising achievement though.
- Vote:
- Down
- Up
- +0
- report user
ah yes one of the first things I do in a GTA title is run down a pedestrian , a cop and hop out and check the damage on my vehicle. Oh the joy of it all
- Vote:
- Down
- Up
- +0
- report user
Anyone remember a PC game from the late eighties called "Quarantine". It was a first person driving game. When you ran people over in that game, it splattered blood all over your windshield. You had to use your windshield wipers to get it off.
- Vote:
- Down
- Up
- +0
- report user
