Game: Post Apocalyptic Mayhem

Platform: PC

Publisher: Meridian4

Developer: Steel Monkeys

ESRB: T

Genre: Action Racing

Players: 1+

What's Hot: Fun, quick action. Cheap!

What's Not: Lack of features. Multiplayer games very hard to find

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Review by: Jason McMaster

It’s around 5:00 EDT and I’m trying to find a server to test out the online portion of Post Apocalyptic Mayhem. After getting my feet wet in the single player, I want to see what it’s like to play against a human. I drop out to the main menu and choose multiplayer. First, I try Quick Game and wait while the search times out. Maybe everyone is playing Ranked or something? I fire up the server browser and select Unranked just to be sure I didn’t miss something. Nothing. OK, let’s try Ranked. Nothing. So much for that.

Oh well, back to single player. In Post Apocalyptic Mayhem, you choose from Arcade mode and Challenge, both of which lead to races. You have the choice of a few different vehicles that range from quick and low health to slow and high health, the standard affair. You then race a track but instead of a lap limit there’s a time limit. The player with the most kills and best position is the winner when the time runs out. The kills seem to be the more important of the two factors, so you have to murder first, race later.

Of course, if the word “mayhem” is in the name, you can bet there’ll be weapons. Each vehicle has its own special set of weapons that are activated by running over colored barrels that correspond to an Xbox 360 controller button. Depending on the color, the weapon is either for front, back or sides, making each one useful only in certain situations. There are also barrels marked with a ‘?’ for random drops and green barrels (for the 360 A button) which replenish your turbo.

Speaking of 360 controllers, if you want to play PAM and, like, enjoy it, then you’ll want to get a 360 controller. The keyboard controls are… odd and on top of that they cannot, as of this writing, be remapped. So, weirdos like me who use anything other than WASD are straight out of luck. If you do have a 360 controller, though, there’s no setup in the game and it works very well from the get-go.

Graphically, I was rather impressed by the look and modeling of PAM. There’s quite a bit of dust thrown by the vehicles and the game has some really nice use of particle effects. The tracks are all run down and rusted out, thanks to, uh, the apocalypse, and can be a lot of fun to look at and bleed on. The vehicles, which range from a school bus to a tricked out dune buggy, are also well modeled and the weapon effects are fun and flashy.

The big problem, other than the remapping issue, is the lack of features. You basically have the choice of a single race or a tournament, offline or online. Online, though, is very sketchy. I’ve tried to play multiple times and have managed to find a grand total of one actual game, and it wasn’t full. In fact, it was me versus two other players and three bots. After the first map, I assumed the game crashed thanks to the five minute wait for map loading. The map DID load, it just crashed immediately afterwards, and I haven’t found another human to play against since.

Though not being full-featured, or even sort of featured, PAM is only $9.99, so it’s hard to come down on it with a vengeance. In fact, it’s quite a bit of fun. Another little perk is the inclusion of Steam achievements, but they’re not enough to really make the game’s life longer than a weekend. If you’ve got a ten-spot and love post-apocalyptic racing, PAM offers a quick fix, but more than likely, it will serve as a slight distraction rather than a new passion.

Jason McMaster is a regular contributor to GameShark

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