When it was announced, Cel Damage was one of the only Xbox titles that interested me. I'm not a fan of traditional car combat games like Twisted Metal. Their flaw, in my opinion, lies in the most basic gameplay. In most car combat games you are given a set amount of lives and have to win before you lose all of your lives. I detest this to no end. It'd bad enough in single player, but it's downright awful in multiplayer. There is no way to just start playing and not stop, or to play until somebody kills a certain amount of other players. Once you die, that's it, game over. So when Cel Damage was announced for the GameCube, I was pretty happy and decided to give it a spin.

Cel Damage uses a gameplay style more akin to first person shooters. It's deathmatch. You play until somebody reaches a certain amount of kills. In the case of Cel Damage you're actually playing for "smacks." But there is a tiny little twist. In Cel Damage, one kill does not equal one smack. Depending on the weapon you choose, you can get more smacks. And you don't just get smacks for killing someone; you get them for just plain hitting them. Generally, the harder it is to kill someone with a certain weapon, the more smacks you get for it.

Another thing, Cel Damage looks very cool. The cel shading is pulled off so very well. You really feel like you're looking at a cartoon. It's a lot of fun to just watch this game in action. It also behaves like a cartoon. The cars stretch and bend. The physics and controls are very loose and allow for some crazy moves. The action in the game is pretty fast and at first took me a while to get used to. After the adjustment period though, I was fine.

The characters are really neat too. There are 6 to start with and 4 unlockable. They are totally different in personalities. My personal favorite is Fowl Mouth, the black and white gangster duck from the early 1900s. There are other characters like Flemming the nerd and Dominique Trix (guess what she is).

The weapons in the game are great. You can kill someone in a myriad of ways. You can cut them in half with a giant axe or buzzsaw or you can beat the stuffing out of them with a pair of spring loaded boxing gloves.

If you like most car combat games, I'd tell you to rent Cel Damage first. In fact, I think everyone should at least give this game a solid rental and play it for a few days. It's quite fun and it's really wacky.