Buy Death Rally

I liked the original Death Rally game, it gave you a feeling of beeing submerged in the world of the Death Rally circuit. You started with some wierd kind of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ized (b4$t4rd|z3d, wordfilter lol!) rusty VW-beetlecar with built in machineguns and armorplating welded on to it. The car was crap, and you knew it, but that was the point. After many many races where you sometimes knew very well you had no chance in hell of winning the race, you soldiered on, staying out of harms way of the neo-corvette juggernauts that you hoped of one day obtaining.

This game has missed the point totaly. After playing the game for an hour and unlocking cars and weapons, I'm sad to say that this game is not a worthy remake. It's got a cheap plastic feel to it in many ways and here are some examples of what went wrong:

You're not at liberty to save money when you repair and upgrade your car after a race. All acquired money has to be spent there and then, therefore it effectively removes the economic dimension from the game, and with that removes all strategy from the game.

Gear and cars are not bought, they are collected on the race track as parts and once all parts are collected you get your mines or machinegun or new car. What was given to you will not be valued. Therefore the game is not about upgrades since new gear doesn't come from you spending your resources to get them.

Your car has auto-fire on the built-in machinegun, you dont even have to pull the trigger to use the weapon and ammo never runs out. I shouldn't have to explain how wrong this is. There are other secondary weapons though that require ammo and triggerpulling, but thats beside the point.

There are some other points that I could make about thats wrong with this game, but what has already been written will suffice. Technically this game might be well made from a programming point if view, the problems is that the designers of the game had no idea what they were doing.

When I first bought this game, I was expecting the same game as original one with better graphics. So my first experience was a huge dissappointment. My memories with the original one was so fresh, so I couldn't see that this one (although shares the same name) is a different game for a different time.

In first game your motivation was climbing the ladder to fight with adversary. This game has no ladder, so if you are an old fan, you hate the game from the begining. But this time it is more about cars you have to get ambitious about. Upgrading cars and guns are your main goal in here. Races are faster and harder (in my opinion) than original one. 3 Laps is too short to kill everyone in the game (if you have a new car), so it really takes more dedication to win any race. Graphics are much better than the original one (it has to be after 20 years :) ). Cars are the same (which is a plus :) ) with cool upgrades.

Of course the game has its downs. Like story is not going to get you. Races are too fast. Race ends till you get the idea most of the time. Gameplay is not very smooth. Enemy AI is not very bright.

But, in the end, you should see this game as a casual game as it is an adaptation from mobile game. So if you take games too serious it is not a game for you. But if you wanna open a game, make a few race, collect some stuff in your free time, this is right game for you. 9.99$ is a little expensive for the experience, so if you catch a sale (2.99 or less is ideal I think, but 4.99 is not bad too) don't miss it..
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PS: If developer reads this; the thing I miss the most from original game is the enemy characters. There are bosses in every race but in the original game as you move up the ladder you fight with harder characters and before adversary you compete with hard characters like duke and sam speed. This time bosses are just normal cars in normal races. If this could be added to game it will be great. (like adding special voice over, small ads for the boss of the game, may be a history and stuff).. Thanks.

First off, when I was a kid I played the original, with every possible options and on every difficulty level, etc. So I loved it. Even though I know I have romantic (sentimental?) feelings toward *that* game I wanted to give a chance to the remake but it was still very, very disappointing.

Maps are redesigned a silly way so they lost their charm (e.g. "shortcuts", "booster areas", etc), as well as "unlocking" new cars, weapons, etc.
This game, instead of giving options for the player on how to spend their money, forces one into dumb achievement and 'on the road objects' farming until the nose starts running...
What about the money you earn in the races in the mean time, you ask? Oh, that money? It goes to neverland! YISS, it is lost.
Money in this game is nothing you collect or spend. It is just points to fix the car and fill the rest of the bars (armor, etc).
So, e.g. want some mines? Good. "Unlock" and "equip" (otherwise it is free), as soon as you unlocked all the dumb stuff before the mine (like "shotgun" as a weapon instead of the auto-gun...).

I am saying all the above by not giving a cent for the game, as it came for free with a game magazine. It is sad. Super sad. Even the "free" version does not worth playing it :/

This could have been the return of a classic.
Instead this isn't a bad game... but in no way a better game then the original death rally.
Only recommended on a sale!

If ever there was a game I would urge people to stay away from, it's this one.

I expected it to be mostly like the original. Seeing Remedy Entertainment mentioned as both a co-developer and publisher for this title my hopes that it would capture the magic of the old title were pretty high. But within no-time this game managed to squash all that.

Controls are just an awkward mess. I played mostly with controller, where the car follows the direction of your left stick based on your overview perspective, rather than allowing you to control throttle with a button and steering with the left stick relative to the car. Sadly, it doesn't get all that much better with a keyboard.
All cars have a tendency to feel like a stick of soap on a wet bathroom floor. You want to go round a corner? Nope, the car is going to stop in its tracks first, then go for a big half circle in the other direction, before turning the direction you want, as if to underline that this is not a racing game. No, this is a shooting game, with cars.

Sadly, when it comes to shooting there isn't much fun to be had. The standard weapon is controlled by the player, only so long as you don't have a secondary gun, at which point it starts shooting on its own (why? Not a clue!). While most secondary guns at least look nice, they are not very effective (nor is the standard weapon, to be honest). Sadly, you get nothing more for fighting off opponents that are behind you than 3 mines - per race. Those 3 mines by themselves are, however, only capable of dealing enough damage to take out 1 enemy entirely. Unless he upgraded his armor. So in other words: in order to get rid of opponents there is nothing for it but to drop back and shoot them from behind. Even though you actually should want to be in the front in order to actually - oh, I don't know - win the race.

Upgrading your cars, weaponry and obtaining new cars is no longer done by saving up and spending money. Money has to be spent immediately after a race in its entirety on upgrades, or more precisely: towards upgrades, as you probably cannot afford it in 1 go (again: why? Not a clue!). New cars and weapons can only be obtained by collecting parts, by shooting down opponents. Yet another reason not to make an effort to win a race, but rather to fight your opponents.

It's almost as if the developers sat around the office challenging each other to come up with gameplay elements that did not benefit the game. In actual fact, I hope they did, because then at least they would have had more fun making it than I did playing it.

If you were a fan of the 1996 original Death Rally, and are hoping this will be a revisit with nicer graphics, you'll be be sorely disappointed.

Remedy have simply changed far too much. About the only stuff it has in common with the original are a few names scattered around the place. It feels like a completely different game which a ten-year-old has modded to add a few references to his favourite game.

It's a remake of Death Rally in name only. If it didn't have the Death Rally references, I'd say it was inspired by it and would mildly recommend it. As it stands, however, I don't.

If you want to play Death Rally, play the original in DOSBox. You'll be much happier.

This game is filled with lazy design to the brim. Rubber banding, synchronous scaling, non-existent difficulty curve and so on. Accordingly it gets boring extremely fast. You can easily see the mobile game roots of this and they show their worst side. Grind without any substantial progress and achievements requiring you to basicly shut your head off and hold a button for 50 hours.

There is no value to be found here, stay away from this 'game'!

Going through the hassle of finding the original and getting it to work is less annoying than playing this "game"...

It's garbage. The handling is horrible and everything looks "poor".
Yes you can play it with your friends, but you won't.
Does not worth 1€.

First game of Remedy team, a "must have" for me. Just destroy everything and then win the race! ;)

Imagine sitting down and watching NASCAR for 80 hours, but there's Geoff Keighley there, too, for some reason.

That's what it's like to play this game.

Nice!

Decent mobile port of a remake

Story: 15/25 Gameplay: 20/25 Graphics: 18/25 Sound: 16/25

OVERALL: 69/100

This is a game where you race cars with pew-pew guns. So, the story is pretty nonexistent most of the time, but it's there. The gameplay is fun and fairly satisfying most of the time. However, in later stages when your car is maxed out and you know what you're doing, it gets really boring as you just get ay ahead and you just ... turn. Te graphics and sound are okay. Everything starts to look pretty bland and you start to tune out the sound, but ... oh well. Pretty solid for a mobile port and a remake of a game from 1996.

At first the controls are horrible... but if you update the handling points of your car it starts to actually do what you want it to do. And then... then the retro feeling kicks in. I loved the original and I fell in love for this remake too. Just one more race, only one. Okay, that one too. And maybe another one. Is there time to do one more?
The not so great parts is the difficulty of the "last boss" and the requirements of the last achievements. That's where it starts to get frustrating and repetitiv. But even if I have to talk me into start the game again to do the same races on the same courses all over... once I'm in I can't stop because there's just enought time for one more race. And maybe one more...

****Possible spoliers****

Quick PRO/CON list for anyone who doesn't want to read too much:

Pro:
- Top down driving with good camera and controls.
- Brings back memories of Death Race 2000 and Carmageddon
- Variety of vehicles and weapons to unlock.
- Graphics, for the kind of game, are clean and do the job despite being a bit dated by today's standards.
- You can win a race by placing first (duh) OR by taking out the competition - and they occasionally take each other out. Or sometimes you.

Con
- "Meh" voice acting. Blame "Tex".
- Weapons and vehicles unlocked through picking up parts.
- Can't save money between races.
- Some races inherently unfair.
- Pick-ups during races come in sometimes hard to destroy boxes. This is due to a poor design of the main weapon that "autofires" when it sees fit.
- Randomness of pick-ups makes it easy to win some races, and frustrating to win others.
- Unless you have a lot of armour and/or a really fast vehicle you probably don't want to be in front of anyone at the start of a race. Only mines fire to the rear and you only get 3 - and they never replenish during a race.

An ok top down racer with an extremely limited number of tracks and a rather dull story. But the game's not about the story as much as the race and at least most of the actual racing was fairly fun.

By the end of the game you'll be sick of driving the same tracks over and over and over. I was also very tired of whatever Tex mumbles. Tex looks like an oversized George Lucas, by the way.

Graphics are good, clean, and the vehicles and scenery look pretty good. The cars are responsive, especially if you work on the handling stat, and there are a number of extra weapons you can eventually unlock, level up and use - but only one "special" at a time. Some are way, way better than others. The shotgun I found to be almost useless, for example, while the rocket at level 1 was far better than a level 9 shotgun. Unlock cars and weapons by picking up parts during races.

The "shadow man" shows up once in a while (via phone call) to offer you advangtages on a per-race basis for a cut of your profits.

The end race against The Stig .. er I mean The Adversary ... was annoying and completely luck based for me. I'd have lost again if it wasn't for lucky nitrous drops at the right times, and a lucky bump that sent The Adversary into the wall just before my last nitro kick to the finish line.

This game os a 6/10 as it is. MAYBE a 7/10 if you really like this genre - and I mean *REALLY* like, as I like it but not enough to be generous and give it more than 60%. Still, gotta recommend it as it's not terrible.

It could have been better with the simple addition of longer, better tracks to race on. I didn't find driving the tracks in reverse to be much good for variety, although they do feel different in reverse. I don't mean longer as in more laps like the 42 lap marathon race without weapons - I mean slightly larger tracks. Some of them are so compact that you're at the final lap (Note that the final lap is usually the 3d, sometimes you're in a one lap race so that's SUPER short) before you've played much more than 70 seconds. Yup. 70. Seconds. Some one lap races last 20 to 25 seconds or so. Yup, takes longer to spend your earnings.

With better design decisions this could have been a 10/10 for sure. I'd pay for a simlar game that has no instant repair or ammo pick-ups during the race. It could have stats that can be improved for the driver and vehicles that are upgraded with parts you purchase with cash from your winnings. You could unlock different parts by making contacts or spending cash. Make it roguelike with perma-death *IF* you actually die when the vehicle is disabled and it would be even better. Improved ranking system, multiple places to race, larger vehicle selection, ability to mount weapons facing EITHER DIRECTION... *sigh*. I'll shut up now, y'all know what I want.

4/10. The game should have been named "Grind Rally" instead. Do not expect a proper PC game if you buy this, but an iOS port meant to be played as a means of spending time while sitting on the toilet.

(Disclaimer: I do probably have nostalgia for the original)
It makes me sad to have to not recommend this. I was honestly excited by the idea of the Death Rally game being remade and hopefully expanded. Instead what we seem to have is essentially a mobile game scaled up that has a lot of the words in common with Death Rally but feels like it misses on a few important cylinders.

Death Rally was a half race and half car-carnage game and it pulled it together well though sometimes a bit cheesy. Fun could be had as the races really felt like skill made a big difference and timing your mines and machine gun fire to destroy opponents in your way was rewarding though not trivial. Through the game, you got money which you needed to restock supplies like ammo or armor, upgrade your car a bit or buy new cars/weapons.

This version feels like the dumbed down iOS port that it really is. Money now only is here to buy upgrades to the car and repair it. The upgrades feel like they make almost no difference in gameplay (except armor which did actually seem to prolong life). But as a racing game, getting better cars or engines did not make me feel like I was going faster. I've read that even the best car with the best engine does not go faster than the initial car an opponent drives in a beginner race. It makes the upgrades feel definitely token.

There is also no real money management. In fact, after a race, the game seems to expect you to just spend all of your money since ammo is restocked at the beginning of a race anyway. New weapons and cars are unlocked after collecting a certain number of pieces scattered on tracked on dropped from destroyed opponents. It feels like progression in this game could be substituted for attrition. I remember in the original sometimes being in a bad place because I took a loan I couldn't pay back. This made decisions feel like they meant something. Also, additional objectives in the original again meant something since money mattered. Here, they are a yes/no box you click periodically and see if it works. It feels sometimes like an Office product had a pop up with the title "Fun" and boxes that just say yes and no appeared with no real context or consequence to the action.

Yes you do advance faster from placing higher, but it still doesn't feel significant enough. After all, winning a race seems to come mostly down to well placed nitro boosts at the end.

The destruction of opponents seems like an area where this could shine. Unfortunately, there are things in the way of allowing you to really get the full enjoyment from the experience. Your base machine gun automatically shoots for you (after you add your 1 additional gun upgrade). This feels annoying at best since you have unlimited ammo and it's not always shooting, but you have no control over it. Even better is in-race bonuses (repair, money, ammo) are in boxes that must be shot... so you have to hope an opponent is in front of you near a box so you could happen to shoot that (and they not just take your bonus) or you waste some of your limited ammo.

This is a small gripe, but the in level bonuses do need to be shot and all appear at the beginning of the level. Since shooting can be wasteful and feel a bit random, this means that upgrades you need later are hard to get and running into repairs within seconds of the race starting is common. It just feels like a bad decision. The original randomly spawned them on the track, IIRC, and that was fine. This isn't a realistic game; why must we pretend periodically that it is?

Opponents suffer from what a lot of games have with enemies that don't have the same limitations as you. I've mentioned their cars are always fast enough to rival yours no matter what. They also have unlimited ammo in their nicer weapons compared to the 4 shots you get in some of your weapons. This is especially terrible in the deathmatch sections where destroying cars is the goal yet they don't have to worry about ammo limits. Additionally, they have health like you do. When you hit 0%, you explode and are done. When they hit 0%, their health bar flashes... and they continue to race for a while. Some number of shots into them later (or maybe it's time? I couldn't definitively understand the logic but it seemed inconsistant and like I wasted a lot of ammo trying to kill a single target), they will in fact explode. You have no real indicator of when this is going to happen though, so I frequently found myself passing them and hoping to get their drop on the next lap if they happened to blow up. Though they can still shoot you in this state.

Speaking about laps, one of the biggest places this feels like a mobile game is in the race length. I'm not saying I need long races, but I do feel like the fact that most races take <=1 minute to complete takes away from my enjoyment. That could just be a preference, though.

All this is not to say there is no fun to be had. I was entertained for a while. I could see this being more reasonable on a device without a gamepad or keyboard (I never did get my 360 controller to work with this game) like a tablet or phone where simple games are more acceptable. I at least wanted more. I wanted to feel like I had consequences or choices. I wanted to feel like my ability mattered. Instead, I was watching a nice looking (not amazing by any means, but it does look nice enough... if you don't look too closely at the textures) but repetative and short car chase scene from various movies. Things happen, but the ending never seemed to be directly related.

You can get the original for free from Remedy which runs on Windows (re-released in 2009); I feel that is a better use of your time and money

Loved the original Death Rally and was looking forward to reliving the days of shareware car-carnage long gone by. What I got was a game almost entirely lacking personality. This new Death Rally is terribly "okay" in everything it does. It gets the job done but is nothing to write home about. If you are okay with "average" then you might enjoy this more than I did.

My biggest issue isn't so much the actual gameplay but how tame and unexciting it all is - the original was all heavy metal, even letting you compete with some of Apogees / 3D Realms other characters. It had that whole crazy 90ies vibe going on - it was loud, it was frantic and just plain fun.

The remake is a very different beast - everything is kind of slow and boring this includes driving at top speed and the firing rate of your mounted machine-guns. You keep unlocking new vehicles and weapons all the time but it doesn't feel like the game's pacing or difficulty really change all that much. There isn't really much happening between your first race and the final races and you can't help but feel like you are wasting your time.

Considering you can still get the DOS-shareware from 3D Realms old website, I don't really see the point in playing this soulless remake.

Haven't played the original Death Rally, but the remake is a good game in its own right. Short, fast paced races, 3 car add-ons, 6 upgradeable weapons, 7 maps, and 8 cars. All in all, a decent bag of fun.

Sure enough, it's not a triple-A title, and nowhere near as complex, but it can be fun. The short races mean you can play a race or two whenever you have a minute and get back to whatever you were doing. Gets even more fun with a few buddies in online[1] play.

Gameplay in Death Rally doesn't offer anything brand new, but gets the basics right. Controlling the car is simple, either via a single stick or wasd, and there doesn't seem to be any problems with responsiveness[2]. Steering does take a bit of getting used to, but in the end is not much different from other console-like top-down racers - after a few races it should feel natural. Main gun auto-fires at any targets dead ahead and within range, and secondary guns/mines/nitro are activated by pressing the corresponding buttons.

The visuals in Death Rally are quite pleasing to the eye. Race tracks and cars look good and offer a lot of detail. The garage view (main menu) shows a nicely-rendered model of the curently selected car (with any selected add-ons/weapons visible) and the UI is clean and efficient. All the necessary elements are visible on one screen and laid out without making the screen cluttered and messy. The UI is designed to be controller-friendly (looks tablet-friendly too) so race selection and car upgrades are quick and easy.

AI opponents do offer a fair challenge, but that's mostly beacuse they tend to drive slightly better cars. The regular mob racers have decent "driving skills" and their cars are slighlty better upgraded, but only up to what's achievable by players. "Boss" racers (of which there is up to one per race), on the other hand, tend to drive real well and their cars are often better than anything the player can achieve. While this does make the game more challenging early on it just breaks it in the very late-game -- most bosses will just speed away right from the start, and only generous amounts of nitro (in-race pickups, random chance) can help catch up. The worst example of this is the "finall boss" - the Adversary - who can't be beat without constant use of nitro, or a lot of ammo pickups.

For the above reason, among others, Death Rally suffers in terms of replayability. Starting the campaign from scratch does not offer anything new, and will in fact play out nearly the same anyway (up to choice of stages). Playing a single campaign is a much better option, especially in small doses. A few races a day can offer a lot of fun and will delay the somewhat broken end-game long enough to diminish its impact.

The soundtrack is a good enough generic composition, fits well and doesn't get too annoying or repetitive. Sound effects are good too.

Pros: Several weapons, including rockets and a flamethrower. A couple of rulesets, such as Deathmatch.

Cons: Far too little freedom, with no money retained between rounds(it's either spent upgrading your current weapon or discarded), etc. Upgrading feels like grinding, as it barely matters whether you do well in races or not. Once you've completed it once, you'll probably never play it again.

Recommendation: Look for the original, or find a game that was initially developed for actual gaming, and not for playing on iOS/Android.