Armageddon Riders Clutch PC

Any number of games feature their share of zombies, mutants, and other humanoid horrors--but how often do you use them as literal fuel for destruction? Well, you can do it in Clutch. This car combat game attempts to bring the joyful violence of the Carmageddon series to a modern audience, encouraging you to take to the streets and fill up your boost meter by running over as many mutants as possible. Clutch has numerous flaws; presentational issues and monotony throw a monkey wrench into the engine. And multiplayer racing--a feature the game practically screams for--was apparently disintegrated by the same radiation that gave rise to the grotesque goons you're squishing. Nevertheless, a variety of events, a bizarre paranoid storyline, and the endless delight of staining the streets with mutant blood make Clutch an entertaining (if overpriced) look at modern technophobia. 

Considering the simplicity of its racing action, Clutch is more of a story-focused game than you might expect. The setting is near-future Europe, where an unexpected quantum catastrophe at the Large Hadron Collider (a gigantic particle accelerator due to open in late 2009) has turned most of the region's population into mush-brained mutants. As a racer named Clutch, you join a band of hoodlums called the Harvesters and attempt to discover the secrets of the Collider. There are no cutscenes or spoken dialogue; the tale is doled out entirely within journal entries displayed before story challenges. This isn't an engaging way of delivering a narrative (and some weird translation issues don't help), but you shouldn't take the game up on its offers to turn off journal entries. The images they conjure--a blind cult leader, human sacrifices--are bizarre and disturbing, and they create a vivid picture of a society driven mad by fear.

Minimum:

 OS: Windows XP SP3

 Processor: 2 GHz Intel Dual Core Processor

 Memory: 2 GB RAM

 Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 8800/ATI Radeon HD 2600 (256MB minimum)

 DirectX «: 9.0c

 Hard Drive: 10 GB HD space

 Sound: DirectX 9.0c compatible

Recommended:

 OS: Windows XP SP3/Vista/Windows 7

 Processor: 2.3 GHz Intel Quad Core Processor

 Memory: 3 GB RAM

 Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX460/ATI Radeon HD 5850 (512MB minimum)

 DirectX «: 9.0c

 Hard Drive: 10 GB HD space

 Sound: DirectX 9.0c compatible