PC Critic Reviews

Carmageddon: Rogue Shift is a straightforward roguelite that sees you race around tracks using cars with unique handling properties and weapons as you blast your way through zombies and enemy racers alike as you seek victory.

This novel twist on vehicular combat may not be the full revival longtime genre fans have been craving, but it delivers a genre mashup I never knew I needed while simultaneously providing a fun callback to racing's most explosive eras.

Carmageddon: Rogue Shift is a mechanically satisfying destruction-based racer, offering high-octane and chaotic races combining bold weapons, lots of zombies and lots of crunching metal. Its roguelite twist offers high risk scenarios where you’ll have to think twice about excessively daring moves, but it also feels like something introduced partly to mitigate the game’s limited depth and variety. Completing everything may take quite a lot of runs, but it only takes a few hours to test virtually all the game has to offer, barring a few later unlocked weapons, cars and upgrades. Racing fans looking for a destructive experience will likely enjoy Carmageddon: Rogue Shift, but its array of content may prove to be a tad too slim for the $40 launch price.

It's not the return that longtime fans imagined, but it's a solid and modern experience, capable of entertaining despite a certain repetitiveness over the long term.

Despite taking Carmageddon in an interesting new direction, this game did not need to use the title, since its mechanics are more a spin-off entry. The beta handling changes were a step in the right direction, as I was ready to give this game a 4 until those changes came, which means hopefully the team at 34BigThings keep improving what they have here. The core loop is occasionally fun and the carnage is great to be a part of, but repetition sets in far too quickly and the lack of endgame content leaves little reason to return once beat. The handling fixes help, but they cannot disguise a thin roguelite built around a narrow selection of events. There is potential here and future updates may yet realise it, but for now, Carmageddon: Rogue Shift is spinning its wheels, struggling to get to the finish line.

Carmageddon: Rogue Shift tries to take the popular vehicle-combat formula and bring it to a different genre. At times, it works and can be fun. Unfortunately, frustrating driving controls, response issues, lackluster AI, and repetitive race types and boss fights hold this game back in ways that’ll disappoint long-time fans.

Carmageddon: Rogue Shift is not the long-awaited revival of the classic Carmageddon, but rather a blatant case of cashing in on a famous name.