In the generation of reboots, remasters and rip offs, it’s no surprise really that nothing is original these days. All first person shooters follow the same schematics, RPGs share similar themes and these next gen adventure titles are *yawn* nothing out of the ordinary. But that’s nothing compared to the lack of ingenuity from the darling racing game. There are two camps (or garages I guess) that racing sims fall into, a serious, competitive racing game that’s lack of innovation is made up in it’s stylish appearance and sexy realism, or the half arsed attempt at copying a succesful idea and creating your own piss poor version. Coffin Dodgers falls into the latter. Epically. We’ve all played a Go Karting game, and when you cast your mind back you’ll realise that there has never really been a bad one, unoriginal yes, but never truly shitty … until now that is.
Coffin Dodgers is easily the worst racing game I’ve ever played, and is available to download now on PS4, Xbox One and Steam. Developed by Liverpool based studio ‘Milky Tea’, Coffin Dodgers follows a group of old dears literally racing for their lives as the loveable Grim Reaper will kill whoever comes last in an act to clean up the population, if only that happened in the real world ay. Each codger is equipped with a mobility scooter that can be upgraded and kitted out with your winnings, however in all honesty it doesn’t provide a huge amount of difference and it’s difficult to rack up a substantial amount of money, so ultimately it’s pretty pointless. Like all karting games before it, each course is fitted with a number of weapons and stuff that will help you in each race, each of which are very unoriginal and lacking in creativity. The weapons are something that could have been really fun and daft at the very least, instead they’re boring and unimaginative. Each course is made up of a different area of the town and each track has been hideously created with incredibly poor visuals and animation, so much so that it makes you wonder why this has been allowed to be released on consoles and why they’re asking for you to purchase it. Right I’ve been very harsh on the game’s visuals and concept, and if you’ve read my reviews before you know I’m not a graphics man if the gameplay makes up for it, so lets see how it plays.
Fucking terribly.
Now I’m not one for swearing, in fact I’ve never violently sworn in any pieces of work, but by god this game does a good job at making racing the most aggravating, awful way to pass your time. Each time your scooter takes a right angle (you can’t call them corners), your scooter almost comes to a halt before slowly accelerating again. Imaging you’re playing the original Tomb Raider on your beloved PSOne, do you remember how she stopped moving each time you changed direction? That’s what it’s like playing Coffin Dodgers, it has the most diabolical handling I’ve ever come across! If that isn’t punishing enough, the game seems to deliberately make it difficult for you, as if it wasn’t insulting you already. It doesn’t matter how good you are, how many times you win consecutively, you’ll always start at the back, behind a roster of brutal AIs that will do everything they can to knock you out, constantly giving you a massive disadvantage at the start of every race. That’s not all, you take ages to respawn after being blown up and every time you hit something your scooter bounces backwards about 10 feet, it honestly feels like this game is taking the piss. If you’ve managed to overcome the sadistically boring “story mode”, then you’ll be thrilled to hear that Coffin Dodgers offers more of the same in it’s other “fun” features. As well as racing single tracks solo or conning a friend to play it with you, the game also features an ‘open world’ mode in the form of racing around the entire town tediously collecting scattered items to keep the clock ticking. Whereas it’s interesting to see how each map links up to one another, this mode is easily the most lifeless part of the game with no atmosphere, excitement or point to it; it truly is the final nail in the coffin.
In short, Coffin Dodgers is hideous and should be avoided like the Grim Reaper himself. Every aspect of what makes a playable racing game (never mind a good one) has been produced so poorly that there is no reason on earth why you should play it; this isn’t an offensive opinion, it’s an honest review. It’s difficult to think of another game that fails on every basic element in such a shocking way like this has, truthfully the only positive criticism that can come from this is that the game does pose a cost effective way of dealing with the elderly.
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