What do you mean you don't own a multitap? Big mistake!

Mashed is a freak of a game. It shouldn't work but it does. It looks like an evolutionary throwback but holds the power to bewitch. If Mashed were a person it would be a batty aunt with webbed fingers, a filthy laugh and a drop-top AC Cobra. She isn't fashionable. Deep down in your heart you know that she's probably bad for you. But man is she ever cool.

Cool, but (and this applies equally to auntie) unbalanced. Just like the pitted road surface in the game's rain-hammered Timigidski track, there's an uneven quality to Mashed's brilliance. When the game roars you'll wonder if the development team didn't sell their souls as a job lot in return for gameplay so addictive it makes your teeth itch. But on the flipside there are moments when Mashed could leave you feeling short changed. And when we say 'moments', we actually mean 'virtually an entire mode'. And when we say 'virtually an entire mode', well...

...Sod it. It's the single-player game. If ever a game lived for a bulging multitap and a room thick with the swearing of rutting alpha males, this is it. As revealed in this very mad, Mashed the multiplayer game has the ability to bend light its pull is so strong. The problem is, while the 'racing for one' strives hard to match the delirious energy of the multiplayer game, its unlockable content serves, its long term appeal is compromised by disappointing brevity and two missing ingredients that the party mode boasts in truckloads; two ingredients that no games maker has ever successfully synthesised, no matter how big his dev kit. Petty human vindictiveness and the unquenchable fire to screw other people over at every turn. It kind of makes you proud, really. Without you, Mashed is nothing! Give yourself a pat on the back.

Okay, we're leaping ahead here. Let's just assume you're new to the neighbourhood. What exactly is Mashed? In no-frills game-o-speak you're looking at a top-down racing game in the mould of Micro Machines, only the cars aren't toys and the weapons at your disposal are as real as the rides. You get thirteen tracks (ten, and three bonus ones), the same number of unlockable cars, three challenges per track plus Quick Battle and Time Trial modes for the single-player, and a multiplayer mode for you and up to three mates.

As you'll notice from the screenshots, whether you're laying down the stiffened driving gauntlet to AI drivers or your (soon to be ex-) friends, there's nary a hint of a split-screen to spoil the view. With the exception of the rare three-lap race and special event, Mashed is all about scoring points, and you do this by outstripping the other drivers and taking the game camera with you.

As the stragglers hit the lower edge of the screen they explode and you gain points. Of course if you lag behind you risk the same fate. But that's why the gaming gods invented power-ups - and in this department Mashed offers up a moist wedge of heaven in the offensive shape of mines, explosive barrel launchers, rear-mounted flamethrowers, guided missiles, flash-bangs, oil-slicks and roof cannons. Better than all of these however is the multiplayer game's Air Strike, that gives defeated drivers a set of cross hairs to train on surviving opponents. Get a lock on a victim and you add a concentration wrecking missile to their woes. Tactical and satisfying in the extreme.

On paper, the single-player mode should amply compensate for the missing human factor by sheer variety. In addition to the point-based battles against individuals and teams described above, you're also challenged to win simple lap races and to enter special events. Chase The Fugitive gives you three laps to ding a flawless AI driver on the ride of his life. Kill The 'Copter is a novelty event that has you chasing a gunship while whittling down its health and dodging pot shots. There's also the tense Beat The Bomb, which forces you to race checkpoints as a device ticks away menacingly on your roof rack.

All of this is cracking fun, and as a means to opening up the game's full roster of tracks for the multiplayer game it's great while it lasts. But, (and it's a J-Lo sized bubble 'but'), there's little more than an afternoon's solo gaming here. And while the AI does a smart job of recreating pikey human competition, without the tightly wound aggression and raging petty rivalries of the real thing, the single-player game lacks the spark required to make it soar.

Add a multitap to the equation though... the sun will rise, the sun will set and the room will take on the musky funk of men together, but you'll all still be there, laughing like drains and launching missiles up each others' jacksies as your eyeballs start squeaking in dry sockets.

And that is the point of Mashed. It isn't really a single-player game at all. We're not even sure why they bothered with it. Mashed is all about the multiplayer. If you don't have enough friends then go and buy some so you can experience it for yourself. Mashed is easily reason enough to make a career hermit buy a multitap, dust off the address book, shave the beard, hide the bottles of urine...

You get the idea.

Graphics 80%
Tidy, with a smart, swooping camera.

Sound 70%
Good FX but the character taunts grate.

Gameplay 90%
Multiplayer catnip.

Lifespan 80%
This game lives for human competition.

Overall 90%
Forget the single player game, the true and only Mashed experience is about four mates, a PS2 and a multitap. Go enjoy...