I was excited to see this pop up on the App Store. I have good memories of these games on our PC and friends’ Playstations, but it took me a while to figure out my strongest memories are of the second game. The first is really quite similar though, especially with some of the little tweaks they made in this rerelease.

Of course, it’s a game about destruction and murder, but the reason I love it is the traversal of the game’s environments via the medium of car. I also like being able to respawn yourself and repair damage at any time. Other highlights are the powerups, smooth controls, and unlockables. It’s really a great formula, but sometimes people can’t see past the inherent violence of a premise to enjoy the gameplay mechanics. Maybe I’m just desensitised.

I’m still playing it actually, I find it compelling enough to achieve all three objectives (racing through checkpoints, destroying other racers, and killing all pedestrian bystanders) in every race. It’s just easy to do, relaxing.

Sometimes it’s too slippery and I can see why they removed cops from later games. Still, it’s a classic in my eyes and deserving of a rerelease like this. I don’t know if I’ll go for the full-blown Kickstarted PC sequel though. I’ve kinda gotten my fix for now.