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Mashed: Fully Loaded
Top down racing is back
in the hizouse! Mashed reminds me of the old school days of Micro
Machines where you could fang around the courses picking up weapons and
distributing some righteous fire and brimstone.
Mashed takes the old formula of racing and ups the
ante for gamers with fantastic firearms, fast paced racing and great
graphics all in the one hit. Even on the PS2 which is starting to show
its teeth, Mashed is looking good and there should reason to rejoice
with this Fully Loaded version that has extra tracks, cars, better
handling and all the little things that make it so much sweeter the
second time round.
The interesting thing also with this version is that
the team behind the game listened to the gamers and made improvements to
areas that gamers found wanting.. for the most part. There are certainly
a good deal of graphical spit and shines happening.
From an audio perspective, there is not a great deal
in the tunes department but the rest of the sound effects should have
you grinning from time to time. For some reason, the lack of music (or
near lack) does not upset the balance of the game at all and really
allows an appreciation of the actual game.
Supporting 4 players with Multitap, MFL is a blast to
play but has issues with some clipping and collision detection, same as
last time round. Part of the problem with the game is that you can be
ahead in the race, clip on something small and insignificant and it’s
all over red rover! Annoying things that cost me the race really get my
goat.
This game would have been really nice online as well
which was not a feature so hopefully we’ll see that in the next game in
the series. In the meantime you are guaranteed a laugh when you are
knocked out of the game with the ability to call an airstrike on your
opponents who are still struggling around the track. It’s more for the
novelty but hey it works for me every time!
With a learning curve of about 30 seconds, Mashed
Fully Loaded is a ton of fun that you should be able to keep coming back
to time and time again, perfect for a party game. Fully Loaded would
have scored higher had it not been for some really nagging moments when
the car got “stuck”, chances are it might not happen to you but as a
result it got a little slap from me scorewise.
Come get some!
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