Back in 2001, Cel Damage was released for the original Xbox. Offering a cartoony, cel shaded take on the then popular vehicular combat genre, it was an immediate hit and many people still have a soft spot for it today. Fast forward to 2016, and Frontline Games have produced an HD remake of the game, but has time been kind, or should the game have stayed in the past?

May 17, 2006  Cel Damage Review Cel Damage is quite an amazing bit of eye candy, but it's a real shame that the game behind the pretty graphics just doesn't hold.

Straight off the bat, the new version is loud, both in terms of volume and graphical style. After hastily turning the TV down, we were presented with a simple start up cinematic, detailing the story of the game, such as it is. Apparently, Cel Damage is the name of a TV show where the idea is to drive and fight to the death, but the twist is that because all the characters are cartoons, they can respawn once defeated. After this exposition, you're offered a choice of characters to take control of. They vary wildly, from Sinder, the failed demon who was apparently too destructive to work in Hell, via vampires and demons, all the way through, to Dominique Trix, who is a cliche ridden as the name would suggest. There are other characters, six in all, and they can each have two movies unlocked to explain their back stories, by winning three and twelve victories respectively. Whether you're going to want to play that long is another story, however. In addition to the six staple characters, there are also three boss characters that can be unlocked by winning all the events in a particular category, and then beating the boss level.

Graphically, the game is smooth and the animation of the characters is very amusing. As you turn the car, the vehicle flexes and bends and the drivers can be seen bouncing around in the seat, which helps draw you in to the world of the game somewhat. Each character also has a taunt button, which can be good fun when playing with friends when they miss a high risk manoeuvre. However, the camera seems hell-bent on undoing any immersion the graphics create, and also tries to cause as much motion sickness as possible. As you drive along, the camera bounces and spins as the car moves, which is very distracting until you learn to filter it out. And the worst sin the camera commits, in our opinion, is when you cross the finishing line in first place. You just get a constant spinning motion as the camera orbits around your car, and the spinning continues until you move on to the results screen. This effect is deeply unpleasant.

Once you choose your avatar, the game offers a choice of three modes. Gate Relay is the closest the game comes to an actual race, where you have to be the first to complete eight laps of a track, passing through gates as you go. Obviously, being a vehicular combat game, you'll run into weapon crates to allow your car to wield some oversized weaponry. These can be melee based, like baseball bats and axes, projectile based, like miniguns and harpoons, or weapons that don't really fit into a category, like freeze rays and woodchippers. Add these to the trackside hazards that are present in each level, and you're left with what looks like a recipe for tasty chaos!

Sadly, the whole is rather less than the sum of the parts, as the races are either ridiculously easy to the point of you only seeing the other racers as you lap them, or ridiculously hard, where it seems every weapon in the game is trained on your car and it's almost impossible to move. Add to this hangups on the scenery and the characters desires to drive up vertical trees and it rapidly becomes a chore to try to win. The other two main modes offer little more. These are Smack Attack, where you have to hit your opponents a certain number of times with weapons or by ramming them to win. and Flag Relay mode, where you have to drive around an arena, picking up flags and dropping them off in the scoring area. Smack Attack is the straight forward combat mode, where the whole idea is to roam the arena, dishing out the beatdowns. There is a certain satisfaction to destroying a competitor's car with explosive sheep or a scimitar, and this can be fun for a time. The different arenas do add a twist to the way this mode plays out, and with the weapons being customisable, it's possible to set things up to add as much or as little challenge as you'd like. We found the boxing gloves allowed us to get hits quickly, but that the grenades or the aforementioned exploding sheep were trickier to use. Flag Relay is again arena based, with a minimum of ten points required to win. If you can accrue four flags at once and get them home, you can win the mode with a single cap, except for one small issue. If the other drivers ram you, or hit you with another weapon, they can knock the the flags loose and pick them up themselves. Obviously, you can do the same, and quickly two styles of players will appear. There are the flag collectors, who drive all over and pick up the flags, and the ambushers, who hang around the capture point trying to knock flags loose. Again, the scenery hangups and the odd fall through the game world increases the frustration that seems to set in all too quickly, whichever mode you play.

As a multiplayer game is where Cel Damage HD shines, but even though things have been updated for 2016, the ability to play online hasn't been included. That's right, Cel Damage HD is a local multiplayer only title, which seems like a real missed opportunity. Playing with friends when you can get four of you together is a relatively fun experience, as the comedy violence is even more satisfying when it has a friend's face attached to it. The issues with the scenery, rock and tree driving and so on are also here, but with the inevitable pushing and shoving that goes on when four friends are sharing a couch, its seems to be less noticeable. When you manage to get this amount of players sharing a split screen and maybe mix in an apéritif or two, the good times can certainly begin to roll.

Conclusion

In conclusion, if you have three friends who come to your house to play games, or a number of siblings, then Cel Damage HD is a fun game, whose shortcomings can be overlooked. However, for the single player, this is sadly a game where the frustrations outweigh the good points. There is fun to be had for sure, and the achievements are easy to pick up, but ultimately this is a game that despite the graphical overhaul is showing its age and just isn't as good as the premise would lead you to believe.

Average5/10

Scoring Policy
Review copy provided by Xbox

• Stats:

Cel Damage was a launch title for the original Xbox featuring cartoony characters driving cars, demolition derby style. I’m telling you this now because there’s a good chance that you didn’t play it. It didn’t really sell that well, nor did it do much for either critics or fans of the genre. On the list of games that needed an HD remake, Cel Damage was well outside of the top…say…1000. But tell that to Finish Line Games, who enthusiastically took on the challenge of giving this underrated launch game an HD upgrade for PS4, PS3 and Vita. Based on Cel Damage: Overdrive (an upgraded version of the game with multiple gameplay changes that was only released on PS2 in Europe), Cel Damage HD brings the underrated party game to PSN. It’s a flawed, but stylish game that isn’t going to set the world on fire, but could very well bring a spark to your next gaming party.

As an HD remake, Cel Damage HD’s most apparent upgrade is its visuals. The original game prided itself on cartoony, cel-shaded graphic design, giving it a very animated and wacky aesthetic. With HD polish, the graphics in Cel Damage HD still look sharp and clean. The in-game animations specifically are extremely smooth, moving at a strong clip without any frame rate drags. Some especially funny moments are when the game capitalizes on the cartoon style, like having your car turn into a scrap metal cube in a construction yard or hovering in the air for a second before falling off a cliff, Wile E. Coyote style. Character icons, weapon animations, and even environmental hazards move without a hitch. The maps themselves have similar themes (like space, deserts, or jungles), but a lot of the architecture is quite varied, like the difference between an alien moon and an orbital space station. The only part of the game that seems to show its visual age are the cutscenes, which look stiff and don’t emit as clean a shine as the in-game graphics. They’re definitely charming and have a ton of character, but the difference in quality between the cutscenes and the gameplay animations is extremely noticeable. Overall, though, the graphic design is very sharp, perfectly showing the same appeal you’d see from a Saturday morning cartoon.

Cel Damage’s gameplay follows the demolition-derby car combat you’d see in a game like Twisted Metal or Mario Kart 64’s Battle Mode. Much of the game uses the simple formula of blowing your opponents up in violent, but cartoony ways. You get a surprisingly large amount of weapons to use in each round (with the ability to customize which weapons appear). From miniguns to mortar rockets to giant baseball bats, there are a lot of ways to destroy your enemies on the battleground. However, each weapon comes in a certain type, like ranged or melee. Aside from that type, the weapons rarely offer too much difference from each other. For example, two melee weapons (say, the scimitar and the chainsaw) don’t offer too much of a difference, aside from a slight change in damage. But the biggest issue with the weapons is balancing. There are some weapons that are downright useless (like the mortar cannon, which is an absolute pain to target enemies with) and some that are just broken (melee weapons that attack anywhere around your car are very easy to abuse). While there are some standout items like the side-blasting cannon and the rapid-attack boxing gloves, a majority of the weapons are either overpowered or simply not much fun to use.

But controlling your car is an even weirder endeavor. You can drive your car simply enough with R2 to accelerate and L2 to brake (also used for drifting and powersliding). Shoot your weapons with the X button and turbo boost with square. But one big importance is stunting, which is used with the right analog stick. You can tilt the right analog stick either forward, to the side, or backward, allowing for one of three aerial maneuvers. Backward allows for a quick jump, side to dodge roll either left or right, and forward to frontflip, which also charges your turbo meter for boosting. It’s nothing too weird, but combined with the extremely floaty physics, things get pretty chaotic. Performing a frontflip off of something as simple as a sloped rock can cause your car to rocket to the sky. It’s certainly goofy and can be rather fun, but considering how small each arena is, it makes the battles feel claustrophobic and confined. It’s very easy to jettison from one edge of the map to the other, and while the game does an astonishingly good job of making sure your car lands on four wheels, the camera can be a real enemy when locked in a corner. Cel Damage HD has a very bizarre physics system, and to be fair, the floatiness of the cars adds a nice flow to the game. Still, the confined arenas tend to show the limitations of this fluidity, forcing this nice sense of freedom to the ground quickly.

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Cel Damage HD doesn’t really have a story mode, though you can complete different stage challenges to unlock new characters, arenas, and weapons. Challenges come in three forms: Smack Attack, Flag Relay, and Gate Relay. Smack Attack is your typical car combat scenario: you earn points for attacking enemies and the first to get to a certain amount wins. It’s fun, but the issues with weapon balancing are readily apparent here. If you’re after victory, it’s advised to go right for a melee weapon, which has a much more assuring attack range. Flag Relay is the best mode: players must collect flags that are running around the map (yes, they have legs) and deliver them to a central hub to earn points. It’s essentially Capture the Flag, but with a great balance between the intense combat and the floaty physics, it makes for a fun time. Rounding out the three is Gate Relay, which is your typical race through checkpoints. Easily the worst of the three, Gate Relay is a boring mode that doesn’t offer too much of a reason to use weapons. Instead, it’s easier to simply stunt your way to turbo boosts and find shortcuts across the stage. It’s underwhelming and pales in comparison to more substantial racing games like Mario Kart Wii or Modnation Racers.

The single-player mode also suffers from some bad AI consistency. Sometimes they’ll wander around without a fight, next they’ll earn upwards to 75 Smack points in a few seconds. Aside from that, however, the lone wolves won’t find too much to go for after the main challenges, especially with no online multiplayer to speak of. Cel Damage HD is a multiplayer game and I mean that quite literally: the game demands to be played with multiple players in the same room. If you can get three of your friends on board, you’ll have a good amount of fun with Cel Damage HD. The game offers a nice amount of customization for modes, weapons and rules, so tweaking the settings to your liking is easy and offers a nice bit of variety. The level maps also have some excellent use of environmental hazards, which make the multiplayer a bit more unpredictable. Cel Damage HD is relatively easy to beat and doesn’t offer much beyond that for single players, but if you’re looking for a multiplayer game with a solid amount of style, Cel Damage HD delivers.

Closing Comments:

For an HD remake that no one asked for of a game that few people played, Cel Damage HD is actually pretty charming and entertaining. It’s a classic party multiplayer game at its heart and doesn’t do too much to cater to anyone else. No online play and a very short single-player mode might scare away the lone wolves, but it’s a very solid example of the perseverance of local multiplayer. The wacky animations are complemented by the HD polish, oozing character and charm. The physics are loose and forgiving, even under the confinements of the small arenas, offering lots of mobility across multiple kinds of maps. The weapons suffer a lot from balancing issues and the three kinds of modes aren’t all fun, but Cel Damage HD still has a warped, goofy appeal. It’s by no means the best HD remake or car combat game, but for what it is, Cel Damage HD can keep your attention for a while, especially if you’re throwing a party. Like a Saturday morning cartoon, Cel Damage HD isn’t meant to teach or advance anything, but when it comes to dumb, senseless fun, it’s easy to think of many worse options.

Version Reviewed: PlayStation 4