"You're going too darn slow!"

Seemingly one of the many lost and forgotten games of this era, which truly makes me wonder how my father stumbled upon this game in the late 90s. Doesn't help that there is also another game called "Whiplash" AND a rather famous movie with the same name. That's why I will always call it by the European name, with which I'm familiar: Fatal Racing.

That title invokes so much more what this game is about.

Now I'm not one to go out of my way and call this game 'ahead of its time' and 'groundbreaking' and admittedly there is some nostalgic bias to it, but there are some elements in this game that, as far as I can tell, were relatively new.
Of course, the most noticeable thing is the completely 3D-based, fully textured world. That certainly sounds silly nowadays, but for 1995 it was impressive. There are 8 driving teams or selectable vehicles and the same number of tracks, all of which contain some crazy elements. Be it a loop, an angled jump, sections of the track that change their elevation.

The most interesting thing is that similar to games like Destruction Derby, all cars can take damage. This means, of course, that the player can ram and destroy other cars at will to gain an advantage. The consequence of this is that you can also be destroyed yourself. After the third time, it's over and the race is considered lost. There is a pit stop section on each track where you can restore your health. Unlike in F-Zero, however, you must stand completely still in these sections, which of course costs valuable time. So, you have to decide how aggressively or defensively you want to drive.

I think the game is well done, and even driving is fun with the keyboard (or with a joystick, as I used to do). I would love to see a remake of this, since Burnout is more or less dead and there are little to no alternatives left when it comes to vehicular carnage.

It's a shame that Fatal Racing isn't available on GOG.

Strategy Perfected. Just an absolute blast of a game to think and play through, and the War of the Chosen DLC does just enough to even make the characters and story more compelling.

Negatives: Sometimes you can just be straight up screwed because you triggered an enemy randomly, while sometimes you can breeze through an encounter because you're completely set up by the time an enemy is triggered. Next game needs to do a better job at balancing at how you and the a.i. initially match up with each other when an encounter starts