The important thing to remember with Totaled! is that it brings out the joy in old fashioned vehicular annihilation.
Totaled! is such a game that offers such destruction and it delivers surprisingly in abundance, regardless of its flaws. Because Derby games haven't had the best rap amongst Car Combat, Racing Combat and the ever popular Racing genres, Totaled's flaws are thoroughly scrutinized and the thrills slamming one's car into another car or even developing a strategy or tactic to do so is often over looked. However, the important thing to remember with Totaled! is that it brings out the joy in old fashioned vehicular annihilation.
The start of the game is very simple as we are presented with a menu featuring Arcade, Career, Multiplayer modes of game-play, Arcade and Multiplayer modes being the very basic introduction of making an eight letter name for yourself, choosing any available arenas and choosing the color and type of available car you wish to use. Career mode starts you off with any of the available cars and arenas for you to choose from and it keeps track of your progression through career mode, such as how many cars you have destroyed, how many times your car has been destroyed, what awards you've received and what arenas or cars you have unlocked.
Again, the main frame for these modes are pretty simple, though career mode is the only mode in which you can play in different types of games otherwise known as events, depending on your arena. In the Leaps level, you are prompted to drive past looping AI vehicles at top speed in order to hit a ramp that will send you flying over a target below, but you will only win if you hit the center of the target. Other types of events to choose from include Free-For-All which allows you to accumulate the highest score by bashing into other vehicles, Hunter which chooses a moving vehicle for you to hit in order to receive a higher score, Maneuvers which tests your knowledge of various attacks and other imaginative fictional events.
Ultimately, these events add to the enjoyment of playing through the game, namely that you don't have to adhere your ability to just playing one event and playing the game in career mode lets you familiarize with the different game events. You also have three different categories of cars to choose from, these being the Muscle cars containing well balanced levels of armor (or Toughness as the game describes it), speed and the like, the Hot Rods which are obviously old and slow, yet powerful vehicles and Sports cars that fast yet physically weak cars. Gamers may notice oddly enough that there are only three of the former listed vehicles, but four of the latter vehicles, the extra sports car being key to beating the one event I described as the vehicle has an even balance of speed and control. Had the developers decided to ditch this idea of having more sports cars and replaced it with a 'make your own car from scrap' type of mode, I'm sure that the game would have received much more fame, but still the abundance of sports cars add to the thrill and variation of tearing them up in a ring, so the uneven vehicle types contribute to this factor.
The graphics in the game is a bit of a mixed bag as we are presented with a wonderful presentation of vehicular beauty for the cars we select and various exterior car parts will flay off once your car is damaged enough (and it WILL get damaged), but once we get closer to the details of each level, it is apparent that the graphics don't go far enough to deliver enough kudos for the game's development. A prime example of this is the un-detailed set of flat people watching the events in the bleachers that are only recognized once you get up close to them.
However, you may find yourself getting smashed to bits if your eyes stray from the cars which are the focus of attention in the game. Still, it would have been very nice if the developers put more evident effort into the interior of the busted car chassis rather than the exterior as all of the cars feature very block, un-detailed parts mashed together in the back and rear of the vehicles and one particular Muscle car featuring a protruding V8 lacked a few details to be ultimately sharp. Regardless, the graphics are nothing to cry over, though they could've been better.
The game-play is apparently the largest focus on the game's quality and it's easy to understand why. When you first get a handle for the controls, the car you drive will feel quite heavy and unstable while driving over various objects. Even when you obtain the fastest car in the lot and use the eight granted turbo boosts you have for every race in Arcade mode, the acceleration of your car may fall short of exhilarating. However, it's hard to imagine any car flying faster than one can comprehend even in reality, much less being able to withstand driving over minor changes in the road and being able to maintain its stability, thus the controls for Totaled!'s case actually adds to the minor reality check feature of driving any of your available cars; just because you have a powerful sports car, doesn't mean you'll win with a hefty powerful engine.
There is also the issue regarding the physics that every car seems very front heavy, but this really does very from car to car. Naturally, the Muscle car with the blown V8 I mentioned is going to be very nose heavy after it plummets from a large jump, but the vehicles counter part, the first available muscle car in the game, won't seem as nose heavy because the engine is not as large as with the previously mentioned car. Thus, the controls feature a unique sense of realism that can be frustrating at times of pile ups as you may find yourself struggling to escape further collisions, but the controls are still manageable.
There is also the issue of the camera in which you can look not only from behind your car, but at the sides of it by using the right analog stick. The initial camera angles will automatically set themselves around very tight corners of the walls of the arena, which once the walls are hit, the camera will stoop too close to your car from an over head angle while rendering you vulnerable for on-coming collisions. However, when chasing or being chased out in the open, the use of the camera can not only help you to avoid on-coming vehicles, but it will also create a seemingly dramatic effect as you speed away from or around pile ups that are breaking away from the pack and aiming their grilles at you.
Speaking of which, the AI tends to be painstakingly dumb which also adds to an inevitable, yet passable feature. Often times, you'll find yourself being mindlessly bombarded by vehicles that will grind into your car until they've had their fill, but they take their sweet time pulling out and unless you have enough room to crash into them, brushing up against them as you attempt your escape will seem hopeless. Perhaps the least passable part to the AI is while playing the Hunter event, after you have been chosen to play as the hunted car, cars will continue to chase you for at least ten seconds after the hunted car has been chosen again.
The sounds, though sounding fairly nice from crunch to crunch, could've used a bit more work as the explosions of wrecked cars are very weak compared to the siren that blares once a round has been finished. The soundtrack is very appropriate for the game as it consists of new-style punk rock bands including a very well paced track from Fabulous Disaster and the ever popular song Heavy Metal Hero. However, most of these songs have a very happy-go-lucky feel to the game, which may make being chased by cars in Hard or Evil difficulty mode (yes, the hardest difficulty in the game is called Evil), less of a serious matter. However, this is the X-Box version that is being reviewed, so any player with an abundance of favorite fast paced songs can add their own songs to the custom soundtrack as it is unlocked for this game (recommendations would include just about any older punk rock, Bad Religion or the Misfits will do).
However, there is no organization to any of the soundtracks, so once a custom or the original soundtrack is selected, songs will play randomly. I've also heard many complaints regarding the sole voice in the game which is the voice of the announcer, yet his witty (sometimes questionable) commentary is far from being a droning feat of boredom, containing enough enthusiasm for the announcer to be integrated into the game (even so, you can turn the commentary off in the sound options).
Finally, we come down to meat of the product, what really makes Totaled! a keeper: the multi-player feature. Although nothing special and the only flaw being a replacement screen for the fourth player side when there is no fourth player, the amassed factors above including the various game events makes Totaled! a very thrilling and challenging good game to play when in the company of others. From the first day I bought it and played it with a friend on my birthday, I knew that the number of people would multiply the number of times I played the game (okay, I play the game every now and again to release some stress or when I've got a new speed-metal CD).
All in all, Totaled! remains a very entertaining and thrilling bash-em-up Derby game with various little flaws to make the single player mode a bit of a stickler, yet the joy destroying one's car is evident in the game and will satisfy a player with the given annihilation. I'm sure with a little more development, Totaled! could've been able to erase the mistakes that mar it from being one of the best Derby games to come out on the X-Box & Play Station 2, but it's a great game that brings forth the bumper-to-bumper destruction you crave on a cuffed-up plate.