Is Death Rally similar to Mashed game

Long time back, many years ago, I had played a game on my PC named Mashed. It too was very similar to this game. I mean, the concept is used in Death Rally. We have to build cars with Guns and armors and go on in the race and shoot our opponents out of our way to win the races. It is like the same game has been picked up by Remedy games and then just upgraded the graphics, put some new components and made it into Death Rally. I don’t know how many people have play Mashed, but both the games are almost the same. You can even watch the video on YouTube and decide for yourself.

I watched the gameplay video of Mashed on YouTube and I too feel that both Death Rally and Mashed are almost similar. But we can’t just blame that Remedy must have copied the game directly. There are many games in this world that look same from other games. For example, there is Fallout series and then Stalker series. They both share same concept and have almost similar gameplay, but we cannot say both of them copy of each other. Also Mashed was made in year 2004 and Death Rally is released in year 2012. Death Rally is made for portable devices as well as PC. I think this is what distinguishes Death Rally from Mashed.

I don’t think there can be many similarities between Death Rally and Mashed. The game concept and gameplay is same. But take a look at the graphics of both the games, Mashed had basic terrain textured to look like a desert or whatever environment developers wanted to depict. But the environment of Death Rally is much richer and has variety than Mashed. There is grass and other foliage objects. The textures are more advanced and there are more environmental objects than just race track. If the area is shown as industrial, then there are metal towers and rods in the environment and many other things like metallic bridges and all. Also one thing if you must have noticed, then Mashed had more movable camera, I mean at some point the in-game camera would go down behind the car, but in Death Rally, the camera just sticks on the top.

The best part about Death Rally is that it provides much better collection of cars and weapons than that available in Mashed. Mashed had some nine weapons which were not much innovative kind of weapons. They were normal weapons like shot gun or homing missiles. I think that Death Rally provides much better collection of weapons and cars. Again if anyone has noticed then race tracks in Mashed were totally plain, there are no bumps or rough patches where the car will act differently.

There was no effect of environmental factors on the car in Mashed. As compared to it, in Death Rally, if you drive on sandy path, the car will drift more and so it differentiated terrain. I think that Death Rally is an advanced version of Mashed.

The effects used in the Mashed game were totally of poor quality as compared to that used in Death Rally. In Mashed, there were limited three to four effects that were generally seen for explosion. Every weapon and action had some fixed one or two effects that would take place. Every car would explode in similar fashion in every turn, the crash would be same. But in Death Rally, this problem has been solved by adding variety of actions. I think there are no pre-defined animations in Death Rally. They happen according to situation they are in. A car after blasting will bounce few times if in a corner but will not bounce much in an open area.

I find this game somewhat similar to Carmageddon. I don’t know how many people have played this game as it was one of the most violent games of its time. The race was similar to that in Death Rally, finish the laps or kill every opponent that comes in your way. The roads were filled with people, animals and power ups. We had to crush the people and animals to get the time bonus and drums to get power-ups. Though there were no guns in Carmageddon like in Death Rally, it was similar game. It has some awkward weapons like, spikes on car, then mace ball tied to car with a rope and so on. I think the base concept of Death Rally is somewhat similar to it.

One thing that makes Death Rally different from Mashed and Carmageddon is the locked race tracks. In both the games, which are Carmageddon and Mashed, the tracks had difficulties of its own. Like there were bridges without any railings on the side. One could fall through it to lose the race or push the opponents down the bridge to win the race. Also there would be mountainous areas where one could push down an opponent from the edge of the canyon. I remember playing Carmageddon which had a race track in middle of nuclear reactor or something like that. The tracks were square in shape with no railings on its side. There was some deadly green liquid below, one slight push and one could go deep down the death. I think Death Rally lacked such race tracks.

Death Rally reminds me of the movie ‘Death Race’ starting Jason Statham. The concept was same but the movie had story and characters. The movie too featured races of the cars with mounted guns and defensive items. Jason Statham as Frankenstein drove some Mustang with heavy machine guns on it. Death Rally gave me feeling of playing the movie itself. I think that this game needed some boss levels like in Death Race movie in the second race we see Juggernaut, the huge truck with tank turrets and guns all over it. Even Death Rally could have had something like it where we would need to survive for some time. But overall, I liked Death Rally.

One can’t say that Death Rally is a copy or picked up from Mashed game or Carmageddon. The first Death Rally game was released in year 1996 for MS-DOS. It had the total top down view with miniature cars running around the track. Carmageddon was released a year later in year 1997 and Mashed was released in year 2004. So it proves that Death Rally was first of its series. Also talking about the camera angle that matches with Mashed, I think when designing a racing game for handheld devices like iPhone, Android phones and tablet PCs, the top down angle works best to fit maximum part of the game in the screen.