Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9.5 /10

Cel Damage HD is a car combat game available for download from the PlayStation Store for the PS4, PS3 and PS Vita. Cel Damage was originally released two generations ago on such consoles as the PS2 and GameCube in 2001. Cel Damage HD is a HD remake of the original that brings the game up-to-date for the PS4, PS3 and Vita to appeal to the many gamers that still to this very day have fond memories of the original, but how does the HD remake stack up in comparison to the original release?

There are three game modes including: Smack Attack, Flag Race and Gate Relay with each of the three game modes offering varied gameplay and the fastest time you have achieved being displayed on the track selection menu across each of the three game modes. Having three diverse game modes is a positive design choice as it provides a variety that really adds to the appeal to play each of the tracks a lot more than you may anticipate as it genuinely keeps the gameplay feeling fresh, while the same can be said for the display of your fastest time set to complete each of the track; as you will feel compelled to improve upon your fastest times.

Smack Attack is essentially a deathmatch game mode as each character sets out to earn the appropriate amount of smacks to win the round with the number of smacks required to win the round being based upon your customised preference of anywhere between 300 to 1,000 smacks increasing by 100 at a time in the pre-race menu with ten smacks awarded for each opponent you destroy.

Flag Race is a form of capture the flag as each character attempts to collect the required amount of flags and return them to the flag base to score points with the minimum points required to win a round ranging from ten and increasing by five at a time all the way through to the maximum of 55, although everyone is equipped with weapons and is capable of stealing the flag or multiple flags you have collected and charging for the flag base themselves, while the flags will not be hanging around either as they run off in random directions to avoid being captured, which adds a great twist to the usual format of capture the flag.

Gate Relay is a circuit race in which you can compete for anywhere from eight to twenty laps in a straight sprint to the finish line, although your opponents will have access to weapons in an attempt to slow you down, but if you are a bit behind and in need of catching up, then you can use your weapons to slow your opponents down too, while a health pick-up also adds a bar to your nitro meter allowing you to have a temporary increase in speed to pull away or catch up to an opponent.

There are four varied environments including: the desert, jungle, Transylvania and space with each environment containing three tracks for a total of twelve tracks, which are progressively unlocked by winning on tracks within each game mode. However, there is an unlockable thirteenth track that creates an imaginative cross-over between all four themed environments and is an incredibly positive design choice as it is essentially an additional reward for completing all of the levels across all three of the game modes.

There are six available characters to choose from the very beginning including: Violet, B.T. Bruno, Sinder, Dominique Trix, Fowl Mouth and Flemming. Each of the characters has their own traits, such as taunts and personal styles, while they also possess their own vehicle that has their favourite weapon attached to it. There are another four unlockable characters, which come in the form of boss characters that can be unlocked when you have beaten the appropriate boss across a set of levels.

There are over thirty weapons to be unlocked as you progress through each level with each character that can be collected during a match in any game mode by driving into weapons crates. The weapons are categorised into four separate categories including: melee, range, movement and hazard based weapons that all cause a varied amount of damage to the opponents’ vehicles and destruction to the surrounding environments. The weapons include everything from a rapid-fire chain gun to a Tommy gun, a sledge hammer to a chainsaw, a Scimitar swinging sword to a pair of boxing gloves and much more besides with your character having their own preferred weapon fixed to their vehicle and the weapons crates providing weapons for a limited period of time, such as a certain amount of ammunition for a gun or a particular amount of swings allowed for a sword until that weapon runs its course, unless you decide to choose a different weapons crate in the meantime.

There is a great deal of variation and attention to detail outlined in the parameters of how each weapon will interact which you can view in detail from the weapons menu located on the pre-race menu, such as an overhead swing or side-to-side swing for a sword or an axe; how fast or slow a gun will fire, how much ammo it has and if it has automatic tracking to seek out opponents, while another customisable element of the experience is that you can set the specific category of weapons you want available to you and your opponents within each and every track and game mode or alternatively choose every category.

There are three camera angles with the default camera angle positioned a little further back from your character’s vehicle, while there is a close-up camera that is right behind your character and the third camera angle that is positioned further back. The three camera angles are well balanced and are positioned appropriately, particularly the default and further back camera angles, although you cannot re-position any of the camera angles to your ideal preference and there is unfortunately no first-person perspective. Another omission comes in the form of lacking any type of replay system, although if you leave the main menu screen still for a minute or so; you will be able to watch random videos of A.I. controlled characters battling it out for victory in any of the three game modes.

The rewards feature includes videos with an intro to the game, alongside an unlockable intro and a finale for each of the six characters forming a total of thirteen videos that can be unlocked as you progress through the levels with each character. The character based videos is a great design choice as it provides an incentive for players to replay each of the levels with a different character.

Cel Damage HD certainly possesses humour as one of its key strengths as the game is supposed to be fun and not to be taken too seriously. The humour comes from various areas of the game, such as the taunts that characters make towards other characters before the start of the race and throughout the race, such as B.T. Bruno saying “You need a mechanic”, “I hope you’ve got insurance” and “I’m the master of disaster” and Fowl Mouth saying “You all drive like a bunch of dames”, “It would be a pity if something should happen to your car” and “You dirty rat” and many more humorous phrases across all of the characters, while there are also humorous touches to the intro and finale videos for each of the characters and the flags in the Flag Race game mode run around the tracks reminiscent of headless chickens as they are forever emphasising their desperation to not be captured.

Cel Damage HD supports the share feature that allows you to upload a video clip to Facebook or Twitter; upload a screen shot to Facebook or Twitter; and broadcast live gameplay footage via Twitch or Ustream as you are experiencing the game with a simple tap of the share button and selecting the option of your choice. The PS4’s hard-drive continuously stores your most recent fifteen minutes of gameplay footage, so you still have the chance to decide if you would like to share something amazing a few minutes after it has taken place. The share feature is a next-gen revolution that will only continue to prosper and flourish as it matures with additional features and further experimentation.

Cel Damage HD supports cross-buy and cross-save between the Vita, PS3 and PS4. Cross-buy presents a superb amount of value as it means that you will be purchasing the Vita, PS3 and PS4 versions of the game with just a single purchase. The cross-save functionality allows you to sync the progression of your save file from your Vita to your PS3 or PS4 and vice versa, so you can start playing the game on your Vita on the way to and from work, sync your save game when you return home and then resume were you left off by loading the save game and continuing via the PS3 or PS4 version. The cross-save feature is made possible by uploading your save file to the cloud on one console and downloading it from the other console.

The controls are well mapped to the DualShock 4 controller and are easy to learn. The face button control scheme consists of pressing R2 to accelerate; pressing L2 to brake or reverse; pressing R1 to dodge right; pressing L1 to dodge left; pressing O to perform a basic attack; pressing X to fire a power-up; pressing square to boost; pressing triangle to taunt your opponents; changing the direction of the left analogue stick or alternatively pressing the left or right d-pad buttons to steer your characters’ vehicle while on the ground or in mid-air; changing the direction of the right analogue stick to perform stunts; pressing the share button takes you to the share feature menu; and pressing the options button to display the pause menu. The only part of the control scheme that I genuinely disagree with is having to hold L3 and press R3 to change the camera angle, which I believe should have been mapped to the touch pad, which is unfortunately unused. The implementation of vibration is spot on as the DualShock 4 controller will vibrate anytime you collide with another vehicle or crash, but also when you make a big impact with your chosen weapon, while the light bar unfortunately sees no input beyond the neutral blue colour.

As the name of the game suggests; the graphical art style is purely cel-shaded and certainly perfects the art of cel-shaded graphics, especially considering that I do not recall another game of the racing or car combat genre attempting to be as bold as having a cel-shaded graphical art style. The original PS2 version of the game has not aged that badly at all, but just like any great HD remakes; Cel Damage HD has fully restored the graphics to their former pristine condition in order for the game to look as good today as it did when it was originally released as the characters, vehicles, weapons and the surrounding trackside environments all look amazing to the point that you believe they were taken directly from a comic book strip.

The presentation of the game is solid with a great user interface across various menus such as the main menu, character selection menu, game mode selection menu, event settings menu, track selection menu, rewards menu, options menu and various gameplay menus with support for navigation via the left and right analogue sticks, directional pad and face buttons, although it does not include support for navigation via the touch pad, although that is not an issue considering the other methods of navigation that are available. The menu screens look very colourful and vibrant, which is rather in keeping with the rest of the game, while the background looks akin to an old fashion television with speakers either side of it and a couple of dials.

The audio consists of voice-overs, sound effects and music with the voice-overs adding another layer of personality to each of the characters, which also provides more humour. The sound effects range from vehicles crashing into objects and colliding with other vehicles to screeching brakes as vehicles enter a corner and various weapons being fired from one character to another, while the music is based around the theme of each environment resulting in a Wild West themed environment having the appropriate Wild West themed music. The implementation of the DualShock 4’s speaker adds a great layer to the audio by producing the voice-over of your chosen character’s comments.

The trophy list includes sixteen trophies with fifteen bronze trophies and one gold trophy. The majority of the trophies are unmissable and will be earned naturally as you progress through the game, such as the New Talent bronze trophy for winning your first level; the Smacker, Speedster and Collector bronze trophies for winning all of the levels across the Smack Attack, Gate Relay and Flag Rally game modes; and the Finale bronze trophy for winning twelve different matches with a single character. However, there are still some trophies that require more thought based upon particular requirements in each of the three game modes, such as the Purist bronze trophy for winning a round of Smack Attack by only using your character’s favourite weapon; the Nitro bronze trophy for winning a round of Gate Relay having used twenty turbo boosts which is easier to achieve by setting the duration of the round to between fifteen to twenty laps and making sure to collect every possible health pick-up you can, then immediately using the nitro boosts included within them; and the Hoarder bronze trophy for winning a round of Flag Rally by capturing two sets of three or more flags and returning those two sets of three flags to the flag base. The hardest trophy has to be the Toon Star gold trophy for winning all of the levels across all three game modes, which is technically the hardest trophy due to having to complete everything to earn it. I would estimate depending upon skill and a good trophy guide to provide some helpful tips that it would take between five to ten hours to 100% the trophy list.

There are three difficulty levels including: easy, normal and hard with each difficulty level gradually adjusting the speed of the vehicles and increasing the aggressiveness in the behaviour of the artificial intelligence that become much more likely to fire their weapons at you on a normal or hard difficulty level in comparison to the easy difficulty level, while the vehicles become harder to control as you also have to deal with greater speeds in the higher difficulty levels.

It is refreshing to see split-screen local multiplayer for two to four players as games are most often turning to online multiplayer, rather than family friendly split-screen multiplayer. The performance of Cel Damage HD during split-screen multiplayer is identical to that of the impeccable single player with no loss of graphical textures and no frame rate issues. You can have human players playing against A.I., although you can turn the artificial intelligence off to just allow between two to four human players battle it out in any of the three game modes with absolutely every element of content that is unlockable in the single player available in the split-screen multiplayer. Unfortunately, there is no online multiplayer and online leaderboards, although that is made up for by the brilliant split-screen multiplayer, while I could have saw the online leaderboards displaying the fastest times across each track in the Smack Attack, Flag Race and Gate Relay game modes.

The replayability of Cel Damage HD stems from every area of the game as a plethora of unlockable content consistently makes for a rewarding experience every time you win a round on any track in any game mode with any character, while the split-screen local multiplayer for between two to four players naturally breeds longevity for the game.

Overall, Cel Damage HD is an exceptional car combat game and is an essential purchase for anyone who enjoyed the original game, perhaps looking for a car combat game that puts a unique twist on the Twisted Metal formula or a fun split-screen multiplayer component will certainly appreciate that Cel Damage HD covers all three of those categories flawlessly. Cel Damage HD is tremendous value, especially considering the amount of content available at a price point of £7.69 proving excellent value for a triple cross-buy package that includes the PS4, PS3 and Vita versions of the game, so what are you waiting for? Enjoy the nostalgia! Hopefully, there will someday be a sequel to one of the greatest car combat games in the history of gaming.

Jason Bonnar

Analysis

• Title: Cel Damage HD
• Publisher: Finish Line Games
• System: PS4
• Format: PSN Download
• Cross Buy: Yes
• Cross Play: Yes (Cross-Save)
• Multiplayer: Yes (2-4 Player Split-Screen Local Multiplayer)
• Hard Drive Space Required: 619Mb (Version 1.01)