As far as car racing games go they're all pretty much the same, the main objective being to finish ahead of all your opponents. Enter Destruction Derby where you can be last over the finish line (or sometimes not even finish) and still finish first in the points table. How you may ask? By smashing into as many other cars as possible of course. The more you make a car spin when you hit it, the more points you get. And if you manage to destroy a car you get points, and if any of these are carried out on the car in first place you get double the points. There are four divisions of which you naturally start off in the lowest and four tracks to race in a season. The fifth track is not a track as such (huh?). It's a round piece of road surrounded completely by crash barriers and the object is just to drive around hitting any of the other nineteen cars making them spin to get points. The race and the season is over when there is only one car left standing. The seasons points are then totted up and the first place in each division gets promoted and the last place gets relegated.
There is a damage meter on the screen showing a car with various "hit" points which are shown in green and the more you get hit at these points the harder the car is to handle. For example if someone keeps hitting your left side, when you try to drive straight the car will continue to veer off the road into a crash barrier. The other drivers also shout things at you as you try to steer them into an oncoming hairpin bend looking for maximum points. Of course there is also the option of racing normally in the game (ie. First across the finish line gets maximum points) but it's not half the fun as the Wreckin' Racin' option described above. There are also time trials and a two player link option which I could imagine to be excellent but unfortunately haven't tried.
It is the usual 3D perspective view used for driving games and because it is a little dated now, is not quite up to the standard of some more recent racing games. It does move along quite smoothly until there are a considerable number of cars on the screen at once and it does slow down quite a bit. All the same it is more the gameplay that is on offer here more than the graphics.
Driving type music accompanies the races alongside growling engine noises and the thud of metal against metal as you pund an opponent into the crash barrier but the sound is nothing to write home about. A bigger variation of audio tracks may have been more welcome.
Destruction Derby is not visually brilliant and the audio does it's job but the gameplay is where it really excels. If like me you aren't all that good at driving games, you can just tootle round the tracks at your own pace wating for someone to pass you and clip their back end as they go past sending them into a spinning frenzy and pick up maximum points. I sometimes just go back and forwards across crossroads until I hit the cars coming across the front of me to pick up points. Not very sportsmanlike but that isn't the objective. Possibly the sort of game Michael Schumacher would be good at.
The fact that the competition is split into leagues makes it quite interesting and the different racing modes are quite good, but all in all it's just a driving game with very limited cars to drive and limited tracks. I reckon that if I had a link up cable and played against a mate I would still play Destruction Derby now but unfortunately I haven't so I can't and I don't and that's that. (nothing to do with the fact that I'm too stingy to buy a cable, don't know anyone with another copy of the game and err...haven't got any mates...) So if you've had a bad day at work or the traffic has been murder on the way home, don't get sent to prison for road rage. Wait til you get home and take it out on your Playstation.
