Wheels of Destruction



Wheels Of Destruction, often written as "W.O.D." with the O being the shape of a saw blade with an angry face, is a downloadable Vehicular Combat game developed and published by Gelid Games on April 3rd, 2012. It can be found on Playstation Network.

It's After the End, and you are a participant in an automotive Blood Sport. That's about it, but hey.

The game is best described as an arena shooter like Quake or Unreal Tournament, but with Weaponized Cars. The base game features five cars with varying stats, five maps centered in the ruins of major cities, and three game types: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag. At your disposal are four weapons, one you spawn with and three others obtainable via Power Ups. The game has up to twelve player matches online or offline against bots.

Wheels Of Destruction provides examples of:

 * After the End: The Apocalypse How is left unexplained, though it must have been a nasty one given the state of the major cities depicted in the game.
 * Artificial Gravity: Glowing blue gravity lifts can be found at certain points on maps, which trigger when you hit the jump button (also presumably powered by Artificial Gravity) and take you up to higher areas. These areas usually contain nice power ups, such as rail gun ammo, and often function as sniper perches.
 * Bottomless Pit: Featured on the Paris map. London has acid pits and Tokyo just has seawater. Any way, falling off is death.
 * Character Class System: The cars have varying stats and subtle bonuses.
 * The Scout sports car is a Fragile Speedster, and can switch weapons more quickly then other cars.
 * The Assassin tuner is also a Fragile Speedster, and while slower then the Scout boasts the highest ammo count for weapons and can fire faster.
 * The Soldier SUV is a Jack of All Stats and has no special features other then being most heavily armored aside from the Heavy.
 * The Engineer buggy is a Squishy Wizard, with low health but greater lock-on distance for weapons and the most powerful Nitro Boost. Its shields are second only to...
 * The Heavy truck is a Mighty Glacier that is impervious to ramming damage.
 * Cool Car: Each car featured has that overdesigned Unreal Engine look to it, with lots of extra plates and roll-bars, and a metallic sheen. Aside from the weapons, the cars have Nitro Boost, can jump, and are fully capable of movement even having lost three wheels.
 * Critical Annoyance: Your car's computer will warn you when you're low on health (though it calls it "durability") but by that point, you're probably dead anyway.
 * Critical Existence Failure: Averted extremely hard. Bits and pieces fly off your car as you take damage, and while this is superficial, losing your wheels isn't. You will find your movement hobbled, but with use of the jump and Nitro Boost you can make your way to a health pickup and restore your wheels.
 * Deflector Shields: Each car as them, but they must first be filled with shield pickups. In practice, they function like Body Armor as Hit Points.
 * Energy Ball: The rail gun's Secondary Fire shoots one of these. It's highly damaging but is otherwise a Painfully-Slow Projectile.
 * Fire-Breathing Weapon: The flamethrower Power-Up, of course. It's short-ranged but inflicts massive damage and scrambles the target's HUD. The Secondary Fire sends out a wave of flame all around your car.
 * Gatling Good: Each car spawns with a Gatling gun with Bottomless Magazines and a nasty Secondary Fire shotgun attack.
 * Homing Projectile: The rocket launcher Power-Up fires these. It's Secondary Fire mortar also homes in, but takes longer to reach a target and has the unique effect of blasting them into the air- opening them up to further attacks.
 * Made of Explodium: The cars.
 * Magnetic Weapons: The rail gun Power-Up. It behaves much like the Quake version, using Hit Scan and inflicting a One-Hit Kill. To balance this, the weapon has a very small cone in which it can lock onto a target.
 * Nitro Boost: Every car has one. It's very short but recharges quickly. Uniquely, the boost is much more effective when used in the air, and combined with the jump can be used to execute some very tricky maneuvers to throw off your opponents.
 * Ruins of the Modern Age: Present on every map, featuring Monumental Damage and buried beneath the Techno Wreckage appearance of the combat arenas built on top of them.
 * Power-Up: The aforementioned weapon pickups, plus health and shield pickups that come in three sizes. There are also full ammo refills and double ammo pickups, which as they might suggest, double your ammo count for the duration of that life.
 * Secondary Fire: Each weapon has one of these.
 * Short-Range Shotgun: the Gatling gun's Secondary Fire suffers from this.
 * Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Seattle hath frozen over. Features wide-open ice fields and lots of ramps.
 * Swamps Are Evil: London Town has been reduced to this, with little more then the crumbling remains of Big Ben and hastily constructed metal platforms poking out from it.
 * The City of Light: Is rather poorly lit, as it has been overtaken by The Lost Woods -worthy massive foliage. The tipped-over Eiffel Tower can be seen in the background.
 * Teleporters and Transporters: Teleportation gates can be found at specific points on each map, which always transport you to a fixed destination, a la those in most arena shooters.
 * Tokyo: Now mostly flooded, with only the highest skyscrapers and the platforms built between them rise above the tides. Careful not to fall off.
 * Vatican City: Featured in the Rome map. Functions as the night map due to a volcanic ash cloud cover.