Entertaining (if often difficult) single player levels aside, Carmageddon: TDR 2000 includes a multiplayer option so you can trash the cars of your mates too. In fact, Torus were pushing the multiplayer side of TDR 2000 as the best aspect to the game and something they paid a lot of attention to. However the end result is a little short of what I was hoping for. If you're on a LAN or can haul your machine to a LAN party you'll have no end of fun with the numerous game types such as British Bulldog, Fox ‘n' Hounds, Death Race and Hot Nut. The numerous entertaining powerups are half the fun (wait until you get the Hotrod powerup followed by Brake failure) and TDR 2000 is perfect as something a little different at LAN parties once you've played Counter Strike, Unreal Tournament or Quake 3 Arena to death. The flipside of the shiny coin of TDR 2000 multiplayer is the rusty modem support. If you're hooked up with a broadband connection, things might be different, but getting a game going via modem proved to be impossible. Not only is multiplayer support impossible via the now defunct Heat.net, trying to even connect to a game run by another modem user is impossible, despite claims from Torus that it would be doable. If you want to play on a LAN, TDR 2000 is more than worthy of joining your collection of regularly played multiplayer titles, but if all you've got is a modem, you won't want to pick it up just for the multiplayer alone.
Carmageddon TDR 2000 is an admirable effort to create the be-all and end-all of Carmageddon games. Assuming you're intending to play on a LAN, the multiplayer game is buckets of fun. The single player game should also keep your attention for a while. It's not the most original game, far from it, but if you enjoyed the previous Carmageddon games in the slightest, you'll be doing yourself a favor picking this up as it takes all that was right about the previous two games and mostly dumps what was wrong with them. For anyone who has yet to be convinced of the entertainment value inherent in Carmageddon titles, there's nothing here that will change your mind, though.
Before hitting you with the scores, here are a few bonus shots of the UK Zombie version with the Blood Patch applied (the previous nine shots have been of the vanilla Zombie version). This is how you lucky Americans will see it straight out of the box when it hits US shores around early December.