Here's another fun game called "Need for Madness", and its sequel, "Need for Madness 2". They're a racing and smashing cars game. The rules are like so: there are 7 cars on a map, one of them is you. The map has a track on it, dotted with checkpoints for the cars to pass through. Each track has a set number of laps, the lap is completed by passing through the check points.
You can win by completing all the laps before anyone else.
or you can win by destroying every other car, and being the last one standing. Cars that are wasting have no obligation to pass through the checkpoints, or even to stay on the road at all. Often the AI cars drive the track backwards trying to intercept oncoming racers.
The game has a collection of cars each one having a group of stats, some are small and quick, suited for racing, whereas others are slower and tougher for wasting. They're also ranked in tiers by net-amount of points, in classes, from D to A.
In addition, the game comes with a car-maker and a stage-maker, for you to add, your own custom content. The car maker is nice and powerful, all the existing cars in the vanilla game where made using it. It works using 2 tabs, in one, you write the code for how it should look, in the other you look at it in 3d and scale it and modify stuff like its colors, physics, stats, and wheels.
Code edit mode:
3D edit mode:
I made a tank :D once you make your car, you can then use it in the vanilla game against all the others, you can also add your custom car into your game to be played by an AI unit.
The graphics aren't that great, but they are interesting. I like the way car damage is rendered, and its awesome that it can be customized in the physics section of the car maker.
For me the stage maker was sort of a let down at first., stages are assembled by dragging and dropping/rotating pre-made assets onto a map, you choose the terrain type, make some environment changes and that's it. But then I learned something interesting. The stage maker's assets (roads ramps obstacles etc) and all 3D models in the game, are editable in the car maker! If you download the game, go to Need for Madness > Data > Models, open your file of choice in a text-editor, copy the code, launch the game, start the car-maker, paste it, edit it, paste it back. It sounds lengthy, but trust me its not so bad.
Now, everything up till now is free. The Multiplayer game costs a subscription fee of $11.94 per year plus a down-payment of... yeah fuck no. No one would be dumb enough to pay for this game. A list of cracked accounts for you to choose from is here. The multiplayer content consists of simply playing the game with other players instead of AI, which to be honest isn't really even that great. The actual good shit is in the trading custom cars and tracks. some cracked accounts already have 100s downloaded, and you can download more. And some people are disturbingly good at making cars and tracks.
Over all, this game feels like stealing. Well if you use the cracked accounts it sort of is, but that's not my point. I mean that even the sp is a free game that doesn't feel like it should be free. There's so much fun stuff to play and make, its no wonder that this game still feels fresh, despite being around for so long. And because its so simple(its made with java, it started out as a play-in-browser title for sites like miniclip and addictinggames) The modding community is substantial, with mods adding flying cars, and cars with firing weaponry, shit like that. Over all its awesome and you guys should get it so I can race you and kick your butts :P
