Cel Damage Preview

Cel Damage isn't so much a wholly original racer as it is a liberal blending of ideas and genres: In this gearheaded potpourri, we have the graphical innovations of Jet Grind Radio mixed with the vehicles of Twisted Metal, the frag counting of Quake, and the cartoon stylings of an old Warner Brothers short. Maybe this bizarre, seemingly ill-fitting amalgamation is necessary. Vehicular destruction has grown into its own genre in recent years, with plenty of copycats and clones around. As the line between derivative and innovative is thin, developer Pseudo Interactive knew that it needed a bizarre design and some newfangled ideas to make its game a standout.

So far, Cel Damage doesn't seem to have much of a plot; however, this omission shouldn't be a real concern. All that a plot will do in a game like this is try to justify why a bunch of cartoon characters found big rigs and decided to hold insane destruction derbies in their cartoon fantasy worlds. Here's the pertinent stuff: Cel Damage offers you the choice of six different 'toons, each with his or her own zany vehicle, designed for inflicting ample doses of cartoon violence (think Wile E. Coyote's inventions on oversized wheels). The game offers 10 different arenas and four cartoon worlds to choose from, with the promise of plenty of hidden levels and secret areas to uncover.

Gameplay in these worlds is a lot like playing a round of Quake. There's little pretense before the action; you chose your character, level, and type of game, and then you're dropped into the arena to duke it out with your fellow road hogs. The standard game is like most FPS deathmatches: You can be killed easily, but you respawn instantly, and a scoreboard keeps track of frags, as well as winners and losers. There's also a capture-the-flag style of game, which places flags strategically around the level. You and your competitors all race to grab these flags, and then take them to a center circle to win the round. Pseudo promises more of these FPS-style game modes in the final product.

Cel Damage features a much larger arsenal than most games of its kind, with a promised total of 36 unique weapons and power-ups in all--most of which are of the overtly comic and slapstick variety. To give you an idea of what to expect, we saw a freeze ray, a woodchipper, a giant hammer, oversized boxing gloves, and rockets, among others. While you can only pack one weapon in addition to your standard-issue pellet blaster at a time, changing your instrument of destruction is as simple as blowing open marked crates that litter each level and driving over the weapon of your choice.

When we played the game at E3, we immediately noted that it was one of the best-looking Xbox games at the show. The graphics appeared virtually complete and ran at a fairly consistent 60 frames per second. Pseudo's use of the cel-shading technique (made popular by Jet Grind Radio) gave the cars and environments an original and appealing cartoon style.

The unique drivers of each vehicle are worth mentioning as well. All the characters move independently of their rigs, and they actually slide to and fro as they're making big turns or are taking hits. They all had character-specific animations as well; you could see one driver get a big grin on his face as he used his freeze ray on an unsuspecting victim, then shake his fist when his own vehicle was demolished.

The playable levels shown at E3 demonstrated that Pseudo Interactive is paying special attention to creating varied worlds that make both melee and ranged weapons useful in the right circumstances. The two levels we played were constructed in an oval-shaped, arena-style fashion, but they were also both very large and varied. Each level featured confined sections with rivers, houses, trees, and other obstacles that needed careful navigation to pass through. This made them ideal spots for your hammer, boxing gloves, freeze ray, or other short-ranged weapons. Other areas within the battlefields were wide open, seemingly designed for rockets or your standard pellet-gun spray. Additionally, Pseudo claims you can destroy practically any object (including the aforementioned houses and bridges) in the game if your special weapon is powerful enough.

The real problem with Cel Damage's E3 build was that its control wasn't nearly as refined as its graphics. The game's physics felt too floaty--even considering that this is a cartoon-style demolition game--and practically any bumps or ramps you'd drive over would send you spinning out of control into the air. You can actually control yourself in flight, but the effect became frustrating when it became clear that any significant grade would throw you helplessly into the air. Maneuvering in tight spots was also frustrating. The cars reversed too slowly and turned poorly at low speeds. The less-than-intuitive AI would often let your opponents' vehicles become congested at choke points and pointed in the wrong directions so that no one could shoot anybody else to clear the way. While we expect most of the issues to be cleaned up by the game's final release, they're worth noting here.

Cel Damage, despite its cel-shaded graphics, and cartoon designs, still feels a lot like its car-combat counterparts. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Along with the innovative idea of making "been there, done that" car hunting feel more like a fast-paced round of Quake deathmatching, the game also seems to successfully poke fun at the vehicular combat experience, with its amusing cartoon designs. While it was still far from complete at E3, the fact that it featured lots and lots of weapons along with fun, supersmooth cel-shaded graphics assured us that Cel Damage will be one to watch for in the coming months. Look for it to arrive around the Xbox launch in November.