Wow.

Make that double-wow.

Carmageddon, on the basis of this time-limited single-track demo, is going to be massive. Featuring bucketloads of sick humour, violence, blood and cars that look as though they've been designed by medieval torture experts, it is a racing game that finally allows you to do what you've always wanted to do in a racing game: run down the pedestrians. In fact, the game doesn't just allow you to pile through the hapless people on the streets, it positively encourages it. With bonus points for 'artistic impression' (the flair with which you send a body spinning gracefully through the air), 'combos' (more than one pedestrian at a time), 'piledriver bonuses' (pedestrian...wall...car...splat), and 'splatter bonuses' (like you need me to tell you), Carmageddon is a gleeful tounge-in-cheek amoral gorefest of a game.

According to SCI, the game's producers, there are 3 ways to play Carmageddon:

1. Win the race
2. Destroy all the other cars
3. Cause as much mayhem and carnage as possible

The very fact that option 3 exists is enough to make the first two irrelevant. Would you concentrate on racing round a track when there's a crowd of people standing temptingly just off-road? Course not. And the fact that you can drive off-road towards your hapless victims is only the beginning. Unlike other racers, the whole environment is explorable by your vehicle, not just the track on which the race takes place. This means you can venture forth down deserted streets, hide down blind alleys waiting for other cars to go past, turn round and meet all the other vehicles head-on, etc, etc. The options are limited only by your fevered and sick imagination. As an incentive to go off-track, 'Cunning Stunt' (yes, I know...) bonuses are awarded for particularly daring and foolhardy actions - like driving your car to the edge of the roof of a twenty-story building...then revving up to max and speeding off the edge.

Technically, Carmageddon is pretty stunning. The engine is very similar to Duke Nukem 3D's - certainly in the demo level with the multi-storey cityscape - and the cars handle realistically (as realistically as a car with a big razor mounted on the top can be expected to). Sickening sound effects abound: screeching metal, tyres squealing, pedestrians splattering. The whole experience is one of frantic and bloody mayhem, and works well. Added to this is the superb replay feature. Although only supporting one camera view in the demo, it is hilarious. Centering on your car most of the time, every now and again the angle shifts to focus on some doomed pedestrian, showing them scream, run, then get mangled by a screaming red flash of metal and rubber. Wonderful.

As a taster of the 36-track, multi-car, varied power-up, network play full game, the demo leaves you gasping for more. If SCI can sort out a couple of glitches (the demo is a beta) and deliver all that they promise (a SVGA mode - yes please), Carmageddon will make a huge impact on the gaming world, much in the same way as Doom and Quake.