Cars blow up real good in Destruction AllStars , now out on PlayStation 5. [credit: Sony Interactive Entertainment ]
One of the oldest video game subgenres, right beneath "shooting aliens" and "eating yellow pellets," is "destroying stuff while driving a car." Yet, while
Mad Max 's '80s heyday pushed the needle as the games industry first exploded, we've rarely seen the genre explode on a mainstream level.
Mario Kart may seem like an exception, but when I say "car combat," that's less about green shells and banana peels and more about direct collisions and destruction derbies. The biggest series under that banner, Twisted Metal and Vigilante 8 , are minuscule compared to Mario Kart —and don't have many peers.
The genre gets a major jumpstart this week with Destruction AllStars , Sony's first entirely new game for PlayStation 5 . (Last year's Demon's Souls doesn't quite count, since it's a remake of a PS3 title.) For a certain class of driving-game savant, this one's a biggie, as it sees Lucid Games finally return to automotive gaming after blazing the genre's trail with Project Gotham Racing . But can they succeed with car combat where so many others have stalled out?
Much like a PS5, you currently can't buy this game
The best thing going for this game is that it was yanked off of store shelves.