A merger of several episodic releases designed for mobile following the original flash classic, clumped into one Steam-yfied package. Gameplay is dead simple - make it to the end of a long 2D map while plowing through zombies and upgrading your vehicle(s). The original came as a perfect breather between slaying dragons in Skyrim when it came out couple weeks later. Oops I meant between applying Boris Vorontsov's patches and Koroush Ghazi's tweaks to Bethesda's stuttering buggy mess but you get the picture (TweakGuides/ENBSeries anyone?). It was just one evening long but packed enough punch to be remembered well into present times. Unfortunately the winning formula was messed with too much and we got something that looks the same but plays nothing like the original.

Improved visuals look great in HD especially unique armor upgrades for each of the 10 cars, pieces of which get damaged and eventually fall off faithfully. Gauges could have been made bigger though since speed and gas are hardly readable in the heat of the moment, as if their sizes were copied over 1:1 from the small flash window to a big HD screen. There are 7 more cars (taken from aforementioned mobile episodes), 2 new upgrades, and 9 more maps. Sounds great, everything one could ask for. More is better as they say, unless it turns out we're talking about steaming pile of zombie excrement.

Glimpses of effort and creativity do exist in certain places of level design and in the 2nd half maps do get more interesting but not enough to turn the tide. After you're done with the 'story', 2 new modes become available: free mode where you can drive any car anywhere, and missions (5 challenges per map). I actually enjoyed doing the latter unlike most people it seems. Sure some are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ but the whole thing isn't very long unlike the main game. There's also no MTX despite its mobile hellhole base.

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First thing I immediately noticed was that zombies don't have any mass whatsoever to slow your vehicle down, they all just disintegrate from the slightest of touch. Size or type doesn't even matter. Completely gone is the sense of satisfying meaty limb tearing vehicular carnage and sense of progress when you are able to just drive past even the heaviest ones. But they do still lower the invisible HP bar of the car, for which the 2 new upgrades are for: increase invisible HP and less damage taken.
To compensate for this absence of slowdown they've done something really mindbogglingly stupid - litter every map with insane amount of wooden crates. Previously they were used very sparingly, in one or two locations tops, as a progression barrier you would raise to overcome and feel good about it. Here they're literary everywhere. You can't go a screen distance without piles of stacked crates and beams. It looks ridiculous from every possible perspective or design rationale. Similarly to zombies their mass is almost nil but as physical objects they can and will jerk the car enough to sever contact between the wheels and ground making you lose traction, fuel and momentum. Leading to early end of a round and less income.
Which wouldn't be as big of a problem if they hadn't made progress as tedious and drawn out as much as humanly possible. Must have been that mobile influence. Gone are the money bonuses from kill combos and replaced with one-time low-yield money crates of which there are 10 per map. Income is super low so you'll have to repeat the same stage over and over again for miniscule profits, earning 1 upgrade per run or 2 if lucky. Distance traveled is the only metric. Took me painful 250 runs to finish 30 stages for example, across better part of 2 days.

There are 10 missions each consisting of 3 stages which serve as checkpoints with stages about half the length of the OG game, so length wise there is plenty of content here. Sadly every map is made of same graphic assets so visual variety is pretty limited. But it gets worse still. There are now multiple optional paths to take: lower, middle and top one for when you upgrade speed. Sounds cool until the first time you hit the floor of the higher path and speed and HP drop to 0. That ♥♥♥♥ got old pretty fast let me tell you. Once you do make it through (more trial&error than skill) your old but upgraded car is automatically replaced with a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ new one without any upgrades. Oh almost forgot - every single mission is balanced so you literary have to grind all performance upgrades! As much of a ♥♥♥♥ move as it is genius I have to admit lol.

And finally the last regression - new cars are far worse than fully upgraded old ones. Whereas before the immediate increase in performance was obvious alongside a new shiny toy, a worthy reward for your grind. Here all the cars are identical in performance. Completely identical, just like the zombies. Only the wheelbase spans makes for a small difference in handling but that's it. Be it a starting car of a giant end-game truck, they'll both make effortless backflips like leaves in the wind along side having identical performance and upgrades. Every new stage is essentially the same car with a different texture minus the upgrades... Order of the cost of upgrades may raise from car to car but so is the earning so it all doesn't really matter. At least it was humorous looking at the hundred billion price tag for a tire upgrade near the end.

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Game is another sad example of publisher ruining their own winning formula by following the money rather than the positive reviews of the untainted original. All they had to do is add some content, QoL, and not touch anything else. Maybe even leaderboards with ghost cars. Could have gone a long way with a car/level editor for example. Oh well so much for looking forward to playing it for all the years it spent on my wishlist.

Легендарная игра!

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