In this post I mentioned that I bought myself a copy of the game Project: Snowblind and finally I got to play it as well as the game Mashed which I got as a bonus with my videocard. The subtitle of Mashed is “drive to survive” which is a subtitle that very well describes what you’ll be doing as Project: Snowblind isn’t really a title which would make you think of a first person shooter. Both are pretty good games and well worth a try.

Project: Snowblind

Let’s begin with project snowblind today. As I had writte before, in the beginning Project: Snowblind was supposed to be the 3rd installment of the Deus-Ex series. Unfortunatly, there never was a 3rd installment of this series and Project: Snowblind turned out to be anything but a Deus-Ex game.
Project: Snowblind is a straight forward first person shooter with pretty decent graphics, decent sounds and fairly good looking level design. The only thing that slightly bothers me from a pure gameplay standpoint is that the controls sometimes seem to respond a bit jiggy. Like slow input or unstable mouse movement. But this could also be due to the fact that this game was developed in the pre-lasermouse age and many games from before the invention of the lasermouse suffer from this.
Another thing that really bothers me is the terrible savesystem. You have an unlimited amount of saveslots, yet you can only save on given moments and in given areas that are marked with the save-room symbol. This is probably due to the fact that this game was originally developed for the PS2 and XBox and then later ported to the PC. On consoles it’s not uncommon that the player can only save on given moments or locations, yet for PC standards this surely is not done.
Allthough Project: Snowblind is not a Deus-Ex game, there are still a few things that it inherited from the original series. Augmentations are the most important things that come directly from Deus-Ex. You are given certain special abilities at the cost of bio-electric energy. Abilities like nightvision and x-ray vision, balistic shielding, reflex boosting and invisibility. You can also still hack into computers and you’ll get radio messages all of the time as well.
What’s missing in Project: Snowblind though is the slight RPG elements that were present in both Deus-Ex games. Allthough in Deus-Ex 2 (Invisible War) the skillsystem and augmentation level system were completely replaced by the Biomod system which was basicly the same as the augmentation system, but just a bit simpler. In Project: Snowblind there are sill the augmentations, but you have no control over which ones you have and when you get them whatsoever.
That said I can conclude that I’m happy that this game wasn’t named Deus-Ex. The working title was Deus-Ex: Clanwars but this game doesn’t deserve the Deus-Ex name in any way possible. However, it is a very enjoyable first person shooter. Not much that you haven’t seen before probably, but fun nonetheles.

Mashed: Drive to Survive

Now here is some oldschool driving fun! Mashed is an arcade racinggame which can be played with 4 player simultaineously on one PC (or PS2 or XBox if you have either of those 2 version instead of the PC version). Unfortunatly there is no network play though. Anyhow, in this game it’s mostly not the point to get to the finishline first. In most races there isn’t even a finishline present. Instead of that it’s the point to outrun your opponents. You can do this by trying to be simply faster than your opponents, but since the one who’s driving in the back will get a speed boost this can be very tough to accomplish. Better ways are to make sure that your opponent won’t be driving anymore or that he/she is slowed down considerably. This can be done by using the various weapons that are scattered around the track like miniguns, sidefire shotguns, rearfire flamethrowers, minelayers, mortar cannons, barrelbombs, oil barrels, heatseeking missiles. All the powerups in the game serve an offensive purpose, there are no defensive powerups whatsoever, so no shields or anything like that. Everybody is vulnerable at all times. Sometimes, when you get lucky, you can destroy an opponent with a single blow from for example the heatseeking missile or the mortar. In other cases you might flip over your opponent which obstructs him from driving any further or you may bump your opponents of the track. But beware, the opponents will do just the same and it is important that you stay on guard at any given time. The mode where you must outrun your opponents in called battlemode and whoever falls off the screen in the rear will be eliminated untill only 1 is left and then a new round is started untill one of the competitors reaches 8 points. Winning will gain you points and losing will cost you points. In many races the opponents will be team against you alone, which can prove to be pretty tough at times, but it does enhance the joy of winning it.
Besides the battlemode there is also just the normal racemode where you must reach the finishline in first place, the timetrial mode where you must finish a lap as fast as possible, chase the fugitive where you have to intercept an opponent car before the finish of the 3rd lap, beat the bomb where you have to finish 2 laps on a track before the bomb explodes and kill the copter where you have to shoot down a helicopter with miniguns and heatseeking missiles before your blasted off the track or destroyed.
Unfortunatly, only battle and timetrial are available as single race events, the rest is only covered in the challenge mode which is more or less a championship mode where you can unlock all of the tracks and the multiplayer modes.
I have only played battle in multiplayer, but also chase the fugitive and hold the flag can be played in multiplayer mode. Chase the fugitive is the same as the singleplayer mode and I don’t know what hold the flag is exactly, but I expect it to be a mode where you can take over the flag from an opponent by ramming into him and then you have to hold on to it for as long as possible.

Mashed doesn’t feature very good graphics, sounds and music. In fact, the musical soundtrack is laughable as there isn’t even any music in game. But all this doesn’t matter, it’s like the classic MicroMachines games from Codemansters and this game was even designed by the same team, just for another company and this game can best be seen as a violent variant of the MicroMachines series. I mean, the drivers can even insult eachother with the push of a button with verbal insults like “maggot ridden corpse licker!” or “You dumb cookiecrumb!”, nothing all too serious though, just funny.

In other words, I love this game and it rocks… Period.