The only way I can describe Smash ‘n’ Survive is demolition derby with added spikes and circular saws. The game is brought to us by Version2Games and brings along a nice selection of cars, weapons and arenas. The game follows a fairly basic storyline, you complete a training mode to become a member of the ‘Necromancers’ then you make your way through the campaign to beat your arch rivals ‘the Hooligans’. Simples.
The campaign takes you through a variety of game modes and as you complete each mission you unlock them for ‘mission mode’ as well as earning points which allow you to buy upgraded cars. In terms of game modes there is quite a variety – starting with the basic checkpoint races and moving on to road battles, planting bombs, diffusing bombs, king of the hill, team death match and one on one fights. There is also a huge selection of cars to unlock and they do look pretty! You can get pretty much everything from a ten wheel monster truck type thing to a sleek sports car in various colours and with the mass amount of weapons that are fitted on to the cars it looks like something similar to robot wars – armoured cars, cars with flame throwers, cars with flippers to toss their opponents around and even cars fitted with circular saws.
For a PSN game the graphics are actually pretty good! As mentioned before, the cars look amazing and the level designs are actually quite detailed and being that the scenery is destructible, you can use the environment to your advantage – for example, taking out walls to collapse a roof on to your opponent or using a stunt jump to trick your enemies to fall on to conveyor belts that lead them off to be crushed!
As for sound, there is a heavy metal song that goes with the game, which is great, but there is only one song, repeated over and over again. By the time you’ve played the game for 2 hours you just want to shove it on mute!
The controls aren’t half bad either. They do take some getting used to but overall they are quite smooth, the only problem I had was that certain cars turned slower than I bargained for and I ended up crashing a few times, like I said though, it just takes some getting used to.
Overall, for a 2GB game it’s not bad at all! The graphics are really quite good and it is a pretty fun game once you’ve unlocked all the game modes – which does mean playing through the campaign however, that only take a few hours to complete so the fun begins pretty quickly especially if you have a friend to test out the local versus battle with. Clearly this genre of game will not appeal to everyone but if you’re a fan, this is pretty much a poor man’s version of Twisted Metal and you should definitely check it out!
Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.
