Blood Drive

Cars and carnage. In the real world these are two things that we try to keep as far from one another as possible. In the gaming world, however, the two usually make a great team, resulting in some delightfully violent and entertaining titles over the years. Some, like the Twisted Metal series, added weapons into the mix, while others had us mowing down flocks of pedestrians in a torrent of pixelated blood, such as the gruesome and addictive Carmageddon titles. The simple formula of roaring engines and ruthless aggression should be a foolproof recipe for a killer game, but some developers still manage to get it wrong. Enter Blood Drive, which even with the addition of the always cool zombie element somehow manages to stall at the starting line and has to be towed into the pits in a cloud of black smoke.

Blood Drive is set up as another one of those brutal reality game shows that we see all too often in both games and film, this time in a sort of post zombie-apocalypse meets Mad Max setting. You get a fair number of arenas which are for some reason filled to the brim with zombies, and as a Blood Drive contestant it's up to you to plow through them while taking out your race opponents with a variety of weapons over a number of different events. At first it can even be classified as fun, but it gets old. Really old. Really quickly.

After a brief introduction on Blood Drive's game show-esque setting, you're left to choose to either take part in the Blood Drive Tournament mode or the single events or challenges. The latter isn't really an option at first though, because there is very little content available for the single events and challenge modes until you've progressed through the various tournaments. Right, so obviously it's time to get stuck in with the tournaments, quickly unlock a couple of arenas, a couple of challenges, spice things up a bit... right? Well, yes, but be prepared to suffer through some extremely frustrating and time consuming tournament events before you start making a dent in those unlockable modes. Progress is a slow and often painful process, which seems odd because arcade-style games like this are usually meant to offer quick blasts of fun without requiring tiring effort for relatively little joy.

Slow progress though a lengthy tournament structure on its own not a bad thing, as long as the rewards make it worth your trouble, but in Blood Drive the actual gameplay can be so infuriating that you may be inclined to just give up long before you've even won your first tournament. Each tournament is made up of a number of events, including Zombie Roadkill, Checkpoint Rally, Demolition Derby, King of the Skull and Checkpoint Elimination, with your goal obviously being to place well within each event so that you can finish at the top of the log. Zombie Roadkill is your basic Kill 'em All mode, with you and your opponents competing to see who can take out the most zombies within the time limit. There is very little to it, but because there is just about no driving finesse required for this mode, Zombie Roadkill is probably the most enjoyable of the lot. Demolition Derby is all about destroying your opponents, using a combination of weapons and ramming tactics, while King of the Skull comes down to a game of tag as all contestants target the one with the Skull floating above his vehicle. Lastly we have the Checkpoint Rally and Checkpoint Elimination, both of which are simple arena-based races with the only difference being that in Checkpoint Elimination the driver in last place is eliminated every 20 seconds. Of all the events, it's these two racing modes which showcase Blood Drive's weaknesses most clearly.

When tearing around a huge arena, such as Flightmore's dilapidated airport or the decaying Deadlight Stadium, ploughing through an endless supply of zombies, vehicle handling and physics aren't particularly important. Trying to win a timed race against other contestants, however, is a different story all together. In Blood Drive there is no such thing as a good racing line, and even if there was it would be pointless because as soon as you think you've found it, another rusty four-wheeled monstrosity would just nudge you gently and send you hurtling into the distance. As annoying as this is, it would be better if it was at least consistent. Instead, the smallest of touches from an opponent or environmental object could have your car sent soaring into the air, while other times a full speed head on collision will barely affect your vehicle, making it impossible to prepare for the consequences of impact. Trying to win a checkpoint race when your greatest opponents are the broken physics and sloppy controls is just an unpleasant experience. Ironically, the cars actually corner with zombie-like precision, groaning and lumbering around every bend.

The single events and challenges are all just variations on the events available during the tournaments, with challenges such as trying to kill 500 zombies within two minutes, or a sort of zombie time attack, with every 100 zombie kills adding ten seconds to the countdown clock. The challenges are actually quite difficult and require determined and unrestrained use of the accelerator and weapon trigger to survive long enough to unlock more events, but with the underlying gameplay problems being as frustrating as they are, there is very little incentive to play through these events and challenges. To add a bit of depth to the events you can choose from a number of perks, with each offering different bonuses from double ammo to increased durability. The idea is that you are meant to customize your powers to suit each event, but in practice the effect on each event is negligible. Weapons are liberally scattered across each arena, and there is a varied selection to choose from, but Blood Drive will be boring you long before you've bothered to learn their strengths and weaknesses.

We often find games which are a bit of a dog to play at least make up for it in the graphics department. Sadly, this is not the case with Blood Drive. It's not terrible, but also far from what we've come to expect on this generation of gaming consoles. The arenas lack detail and atmosphere, feeling barren and lifeless, while the vehicles lack a visual flair needed to make them into memorable dealers of death. All the vehicles are decked out in armour plating and nasty ramming spikes, with a coat of dried blood splattered here and there to complete the look, but texture quality is below par and the cars have a generic feel to them. I can still clearly picture the main car in the Carmageddon titles, looking splendid in its red paint with the saw-blade down the middle, but there's nothing in Blood Drive that will stick in your mind long after you've tired of the game. It's not that the vehicles are ugly, they're just unremarkable. Weapon effects are acceptable, but nothing more, as are the different special powers which each vehicle comes equipped with. The zombies which populate the maps are of your traditional lurching variety, and you barely ever see them close up for more than a split second before they are splattered across your windscreen and flung high into the air.

No prizes for guessing that the music in Blood Drive is mostly made up of aggressive guitar-based metal, which fits well within the context of the game and does its bit to increase the adrenaline flow while power sliding through a crowd of zombies. Conversely, hit the pause button and the madness subsides, with a hauntingly delicate acoustic guitar track which stands out purely because it seems so out of place. Each driver has his or her own catchphrases and silly lines which they scream out during events, and they are as corny as you could ever imagine, but they don't repeat so often as to become too annoying. Ambient sounds, engine noises and so on are all quite basic and unobtrusive but don't add a lot of excitement to your average Blood Drive session.

Online multiplayer doesn't add anything really new to the gameplay either, except that now you are stumbling around the tracks with real people instead of computer controlled opponents. In some games the addition of human opposition is enough to lift a game out of the depths of mediocrity, but not for Blood Drive. Online Demolition Derby events are probably the closest you will come to having fun here, but it's short lived, and far outweighed by the horrible experience of taking part in the checkpoint based events against other people. As with the single-player modes, much of Blood Drive involves ramming into other cars, but the controls and handling make it near impossible to aim your vehicle at an opponent successfully. Most games add something unique for the multiplayer component to draw the crowds, but with Blood Drive it's just more of the same. And that's a bad thing.

Perhaps a gaming generation ago a game like this would have found favour with the kids, what with its mean looking vehicles and lighthearted take on zombie slaughter, but things have changed since then. We've grown to expect a lot more from our games, both on a surface level in terms of visuals and presentation, as well as, and more importantly, in terms of the actual gameplay experience. In all respects Blood Drive is a substandard game, and with release schedules overloaded with top quality titles these days, there just isn't time or money for substandard games. There is no excuse for sloppy gameplay like this.

Most of the modes are only entertaining for the first ten minutes, but you will be spending far longer than that trying to slog through the overly long tournaments. Which, by the way, can not be saved halfway, so you have to finish them in one sitting, with no way to restart individual events. If the people in charge of this undead nightmare had decided to cut their losses and rather trim this down to maybe just the Zombie Roadkill mode and released it as an Xbox LIVE Arcade title, I'm sure we would all be more forgiving of its shortcomings. But as a retail release, Blood Drive doesn't have much going for it at all, proving that not even the inclusion of zombies can save an intrinsically bad game. We, the gaming public, demand and deserve better.

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