Crumple Zone Review

90s racing games were so much fun back then. I was never really good at them but I was good enough to beat the computer AIs so I had that going for me. I was very excited when I got the chance to review Crumple Zone by OutofTune.

Crumple Zone is a racing game with the style of 90s graphics and encourages you to crash in other drivers. It sounded like my kind of driving style. After all, I do thoroughly enjoy mayhem here and there. I entered this game full of anticipation and while it was fun at times, I did find myself frustrated at a number of things.

The first thing I noticed is that a lot of leagues were locked. In order to unlock them, I had to beat the previous leagues. This was fine until I unlocked one of the leagues and found out that more challenging leagues had better race tracks. The harder leagues I wish I could unlock but I was stuck at the first three. The last two leagues shall remain outside my capabilities.

I also was “coached” by two fellow racers whom I found to be quite annoying. They did not add anything to the game for me and their attempts at humor were very lackluster. To be honest, I could have done without their dialogues. Fortunately, I was able to just skip these entirely. One time though, one of the characters promised to give me a “prize” if I won an event. However, after I won the said event, I never got the prize. There was no more mention of the said prize which frustrated me greatly.

Speaking of frustrations, the controls on this game were both simplistic and very cruel. They were simple because on the keyboard, I only had to use the arrow keys. I pressed “up” to accelerate and “down” to brake. Turning was very stiff and very awkward. When I plugged in a controller, the car was easier to control but not by much. Turning was still an absolute nightmare and was part of the reason I could not unlock all the leagues. In other racing games like Gran Turismo, I could use a handbrake for sharp turns. This sadly was not the case for Crumple Zone. In fact, even the walls were hard to avoid in a straight line. What I mean is that if I drove too close to some walls, I would randomly crash due to what I assumed was an invisible barrier that was missed in the quality testing.

But the controls were not the only thing that frustrated me. I was so sure that I would have access to better cars one I beat each league but instead, I only have three options for my choice of vehicles. I could not tell any difference between them so I just ended up picking whatever I felt looked “coolest”. It would have been nice to have stats on the cars themselves.

Now, despite all the drawbacks I experienced, I did have fun playing Crumple Zone. The crashing of the cars were highly entertaining. I got points for more severe crashes and could win races simply by crashing into cars meaning that I did not actually have to finish the race in first place if I scored high enough in my crashes. However, the scoring system was a bit weird. I only got points for hitting someone but there were no combo points. If I crashed a car into another car or multiple cars, that only counted as one crash. If a car crashed into me and caused me to hit another car, I got points for crashing into the other car. It would be great if a system could be rigged up to allow for bonus points for causing a pileup of wrecks.

The graphics and music of Crumple Zone were purposefully made to look and feel like a 90s videogame. I absolutely loved it. Granted, crashes barely made dents in the car unless my car was on the verge of exploding. But I feel that is part of the appeal. The soundtrack in Crumple Zone felt like heavy metal which was appropriate for the game. My only complaints here are that it was too soft to properly listen to and there was no way to skip songs.

Crumple Zone had the potential to be truly an awesome racing game that emphasizes on crashes. I honestly did have fun playing it and I absolutely loved the arenas. However, with the janky controls and the lack of cars for me to drive in the beginning, I felt as though Crumple Zone fell short of its potential.