DethKarz

Certified Hood®™️ Classic

Гоночки 1998 года, почти ровесник шедеврального Need for Speed 3: Hot Pursuit. В 2023 году, выглядит как инди, неудивительно, что в своё время игра требовала высокие системные требования в отличии от HFS3, который выглядит устаревшим в плане графики, благодаря что изначально на Playstation One выходила (на ПК позже). Но не гемплей и великолепный дизайн карт. И не об этом обзор пишу. Название игры зацензурено под видом игра слов Death Cars. Играется по "правилам" как в фильме про Франкенштейна - Смертельные гонки. Едешь, ловишь первым оружие или защита (да починку от невидимой и неуловимой дяди Васи из гаража). Вот и выбираешь врага и курок ждёт спуска. И ещё момент "бессмертия" игры DethKarz, это поведение машин, на аркаду не пахнет, симулятор тоже не пахнет, а равномерный слой, смотря, какую машину выбираешь, их четыре: 1. Маневренная, слабая броня и едет среднее. 2. Всё среднее, но чуток побыстрей. 3. Всё среднее кроме брони, толстокожая. 4. Тупое управление, броня такое себе и едет как El Nino из NFS3 (ПК версия) Выбор хардкора! Трасса, выбор на растерзания себя, да, да, растерзание, на уничтожение, если будешь спать за рулём. Опять фыфтыре штук!: 1. Городская, со перепадами настроения, прям как урбанисты. 2. Зимняя, а погода альпийская, на лыжах хочется покататься. 3. Тропическая, Южная Америка без анаконд и одногрудых амазонок. 4. Красная жара, нет, Красная планета со своими сумасшедшими поворотами со шансом на вылёт Сложности тоже имеются, к счастью, не четыре, а цифра, который Габен ненавидит, это три (обычное, среднее и сложное). А работает так, не AI соперников, а сложностью конфигурации трассы, победа в гонках, зависит от тебя, прокладка ты наш, между сиденьем и рулём. Но есть нюансы, победа в чемпионатах должно иметь четыре высоких мест, там очки зарабатываются как в F1 и без провалившей "катки" т.е. убившим на трассе, гонщик не Франкенштейн. Иначе, победа в чемпионате будет в кавычках в духе - Молодец, что победил, но ты неудачник! Сурово? А то! Игра такая.

DethKarz is an exhilarating combat racing video game that transports players to a futuristic world of high-speed racing and adrenaline-pumping action. The heart of DethKarz lies in its fast-paced and intense racing gameplay. Players can choose from a variety of futuristic cars and race on tracks set in a stunning sci-fi environment. Different kinds of powerups can be picked up during the race which will either help you win, or make you lose. The tracks get more challenging throughout the game, while cars get faster. Turning it into a thrilling ride. The game also features a dynamic soundtrack that adds to the adrenaline-pumping atmosphere. Smooth controls and gameplay making it an immersive experience that will keep players hooked for hours. I used to own a physical copy of this gem and spent tons of hours on it. Even after all this time it hasn't lost its thrill.

this game is from 1998! i played that in my childhood on my very first computer. the hardest racing game of my childhood. it manage to make me feel like i'm a raging ten years old again. i love it!

Op Gog.com voor het eerst kennisgemaakt (al heb ik er vroeger in 1998 wel een bespreking van gelezen in een Vlaams gamemagazine) met deze mooie klassieker! Al heb ik deze al volledig uitgereden op gog kon ik het niet laten deze ook op Steam te kopen wegens de zeer lage prijs. Mooie 3DFX graphics, heel knappe tracks, mooie maar vreemde bolides, onder begeleiding van dreunende techno tracks. Powerups om een snelheidsboost, reparatie, energieslurper, bommenlegger, allerlei soorten raketten, etc... Je hebt ook nog een gewoon wapen ter beschikking die je altijd kan gebruiken. De game play zit heel goed en je kan je controller gebruiken, al kan je deze niet volledig naar wens configureren, dus geen Force Feedback en gas geven en remmen kan enkel met de bovenste bumper buttons. Vond je POD, die andere SF racer uit het 3DFX tijdperk, leuk dan moet je zeker deze ook spelen! Voor de prijs moet je het niet laten. Have fun !!! :)

What a great opportunity to play this retro game again after so many years! Back in the 90s Dethkarz was "the" perfect racing game to me with cool tracks, nice cars, good balance. And it came all well developed, solid and stable. And so it still is today. Works perfectly on modern machines and it still looks so pretty! Worth every penny!

The first time I played this was on a CD I got from a cereal box back in the 90s. Loved it then. Playing it now in 2022 and it has the same appeal. It's simple and generic but gets the "decent racing game" formula just right. 10/10

Суровая в плане сложности гонка-стрелялка. Играется бодро, но сложно. Кайфовая клубно-космическая музыка из 90х. Порекомендовать могу только любителям ретроигр такого жанра. Остальные могут спокойно пропустить.

First off, some seizure warnings: - The intro video has a strange compression error which causes it to flash, and it plays every time you launch the game. If you’re sensitive to flashing lights, press escape during the publisher’s splash screen to skip the intro video. - If you see a car float into the air engulfed in blue flames or hear electricity crackling in your immediate vicinity, try to get as far away as possible. You’ll have a few seconds until that car explodes, and depending on your proximity, it can cause your screen to strobe quite intensely. - The pit lane on each map is made up of neon blue lights and black strips. There’s… Really no way around this one. I suggest abusing repair/shield powerups whilst trying to avoid taking damage as much as possible. [hr][/hr] To be honest, this game didn’t leave a good first impression. It has a myriad of technical issues, and due to the popularity of the game (Or lack thereof), I was left unable to play it for two years after my purchase. However, I’ve since gained some experience in patching older games, and I returned to find that the solution to all of my problems was actually quite simple; [h3]Intall dgVoodoo.[/h3] To get your controller working, make sure to select “Enabled in Games w/o Support” under Steam Settings > Controller, then plug the controller in before launching the game and switch the in-game input from Keyboard to Joy 1. [hr][/hr] So, after that ordeal, I must say that this game actually feels really smooth to play. The vehicles are quite floaty, but in a way which complements and contributes to the overall feel of the game, and it’s got some old-school drifting mechanics, but you get used to them after the first few laps. Still a bit of a pain when you’re speeding toward a hairpin turn at Mach 1, though. Awesome vibes in the map design and the soundtrack goes incredibly hard. Just remember that the maps are made to be seen from the track. If you go off course, you’ll start seeing budget cuts. I believe multiplayer still works as it allows client hosting and utilises one of four different connection methods, but all of them were greyed out aside from TCP/IP. There’s a session list which appears if you leave the address line blank, but there were no sessions available during testing, so I’m not sure that it actually works as a public server repository. That said, if you wanna pick it up with a group of friends, I’m sure it’s easy enough to get running without too much hassle. Now to give an overview of the content. There are twelve maps, or more accurately, four maps each with three different circuits. There are a total of eight musical tracks the game switches between depending on the circuit, plus a credits track, replay track, and main menu theme. When each track ends, it doesn’t loop. There are four car brands, each with three variants unlocked via championship mode, plus a secret car. They all have different stats which contribute to your overall playstyle, but they share the same two weapons, both of which are exactly the same bar look and sound. The secret car has max stats in every category, but it doesn’t seem much faster than the other cars, handles like ♥♥♥♥, and will likely explode during the first lap. As a little bonus fact, its claims to be part of its own team known as Templar, however it sports a Blitzwagen logo on the selection screen. There also seem to be some mechanics built around car selection. A team score is calculated after each race based on the amount of cars in your team who survived the race, what their overall placements were, and possibly how many kills they got. Another benefit of this mechanic is that other cars on your team won’t attack you. It’s an interesting concept, and probably quite useful for players who are just trying to beat the game. That said, it’s useless to those of us going for all gold trophies, which I believe is a requirement for unlocking the secret car. As with any game, it has a couple of negatives. The game will sometimes freeze on startup for no apparent reason, and it will continue to do so after the first occurrence. This can be fixed by restarting your PC. Not sure what causes it or why that fixes it, but it does. Frame drops aren’t common, but when they occur, they can lead to incredibly disorientating teleportation (I only noticed this occurring on Red Planet - Medium with the graphical settings maxed out). There’s an option for slowdown in the settings which may make it a little less jarring, but it’s weird that it’s happening at all given the two and a half decades of technological advancement since release. You can’t exit championship mode during a season, otherwise the season resets. This isn’t typically an issue as most seasons are only three or four maps long, but the final season is a twelve map gauntlet, which can take over an hour to beat even at your best. Furthermore, retries in championship mode are finite as you’re given a limited amount of retry tokens which replenish at the end of each season. This seems like a strange design choice as an arcade port was never intended. There was apparently an N64 port planned at some point, but that’s still a home console, so this limitation is absolutely baffling to me. There are some minor clipping issues (Mainly noticeable on higher speeds), but the game does a pretty good job at keeping you where you’re supposed to be. The Anassi AI goes through a sharp difficulty spike after the Platinum championship (Apparently doesn't happen on 30fps), and doubly so after the Iridium championship, but it’s still possible to beat them with a little effort. Interestingly, the save files don’t seem to contain unlock information. While a fresh install of the game with a 100% completed save file will retain your championship progress, you will not be able to access the unlocked content in other game modes. If you ever find yourself in this situation, just speed through the first season again to unlock medium maps and all of the cars, then the second season to unlock all long maps. Alternatively, you can use the cheat menu. It seems like this game could be fairly easy to mod with a little research, at least for music/texture replacements. Everything’s stored in Data/Dethkarz.dkz, so I assume you can overwrite any files without causing irreparable damage by simply placing a file of the same name/format in the Data folder the way you would with something like Skyrim mods. If not, you’d need to repackage everything as a .dkz file, but if you can successfully figure out how to do that, you can probably mod in whatever your heart desires. There [i]is[/i] a free program called DkZ Studio used for modding Pro Evolution Soccer 5 and 6, but I believe it’s designed for a different file type with the same extension as these games were made by different developers and I have thus far been unable to use it. There’s no engine information available as far as I can tell, and I highly doubt that it shares an engine with any games other than GP500, which was released by the same devs only a month earlier. It seems like all of the models use various proprietary file types (E.g. .track, .x, .walls, etc.), however the textures are mainly bitmap and targa files, and the music is entirely comprised of .ogg files located in a seperate and easily accessible directory. Another thing worth noting is that save editing is not currently possible as saves are handled by a proprietary “Dethkarz Save” format, or .dks, but if by some miracle this game gains interest within the modding community, I’m sure all manner of things will be possible in due time. [hr][/hr] TL;DR - This is a game for fans of the WipEout franchise looking for something closer to the original aesthetic rather than a modern-day love letter. It ain’t anti-grav racing per se, but it definitely captures the same look and feel, and if you don’t mind a little patching to get it working, it’s definitely worth the price.

I've tried playing it on SteamDeck. It's really subpar experience (probably poor glide rapper choice( - bad controls(should easily fixed by SteamInput. The only downloadable layout looks OK at beginning, but using joystick/analog steering is really weird and much harder than digital..I've played in on my linux machine using joypad, without such problems) - black screen in Glide/3DFX mode - poor resolution selection. Using other wrapper worked in 1600x1200 native. There's only 1024x760 available) - graphics glitches. - poor performance with heavy slowdowns (unacceptable on RdNA2 machine. It always worked really good under WINE/linux and on windows XP/7 machines) I really love this game and hope it will be fixed soon...