Many years ago, I had a Dreamcast. One of my favorite games for it was Cel Damage, mainly because it was simple, easy fun. You could just boot it up and start the melee. Lately, I haven’t seen many melee driving games, so I was quite pleased to see the return of Cel Damage in the new release of Cel Damage HD. As you might guess by the name, Cel Damage HD is a cel-shaded game. There aren’t very many of those being made any more, but the style gives you the appearance of playing inside a cartoon (not an anime). The edge lines are very thick and the colors are vibrant. When Cel Damage was first released, the artwork was quite groundbreaking. Now, it is a retro look that I must admit looks quite good on modern TVs. The characters are quite varied in their look, from the spoiled punk girl Violet to the demonic Sinder. The tracks are quite different in their four different looks as well.

You don’t hear the characters speak much during the games, other than to taunt each other, but you will get to hear them during cut-scenes. The more of the boards that you beat, the more scenes you will unlock. Granted, they don’t really affect anything, but they’re fun to watch.

As I mentioned, Cel Damage HD is a melee racing game. You will choose a driver and then choose what track you want to play from the ones that you have unlocked. There are six drivers unlocked when you start playing: Violet, B.T. Bruno, Sinder, Dominique Trix, Fowl Mouth, and Flemming. There are four more characters that you can unlock, once you beat their areas: Whack Angus (Wild Wooly West boss), T. Wrecks (Swamp Stomp Boss), Count Earl (Monster Mash Boss), and Brian the Brain (Babbling 5 Boss). They each have a different car and different default weapons. Who you choose to use is up to what you want. I find that if I’m going for the Gate Relay, I like Fowl Mouth as his car feels a lot faster than the rest and handles quite well. For the Flag Rally, I find any of them that I happen to want work well. For the Smack Attack, I tend to like Violet for some reason. I couldn’t tell you exactly why, but I seem to do better with her default weapon.

Of course, there are other weapons that you will be able to pick up in all of the types and levels. Once again, the weapons that you find can make or break you, depending on which level you are playing. I really love the boxing gloves for the Smack Attack. If you can corner someone with them and flip while you’re hitting them, you can win in a minute or so. On the Gate Relay and Flag Rally, you might want a weapon that gets your opponents from further away.

The three ways you can play are Gate Relay, Flag Rally, and Smack Attack. For each one, there are four different areas that you can play in, but only two of them will be unlocked from the beginning. Which two depends on which race you choose. I like that because you can see all four areas just by choosing a different race type. Once you beat one level, it will unlock the next. After you beat two levels in one area, it will unlock the first level of the other two areas. While there are not that many levels in each area, it’s still enough that you don’t get bored. You’re not really playing for the areas anyway, just the melee.

Cel Damage HD provides three different difficulty levels: Easy, Normal and Hard. You can change the difficulty each time you choose a board to play. If you’re in the mood for a challenge, you can bump it up to Hard. The A.I.-controlled characters will be more aggressive. If you really don’t feel like a challenge, you can change it down to Easy. Personally, I find Normal is fun.

You can play Cel Damage HD with up to four players locally. If you have friends over playing, your game is going to be as easy or hard as your friends are. There will still be a couple A.I.-controlled characters (unless you choose to turn off the A.I. characters), but I find that at least my friends are usually harder to beat than the A.I. on Normal. Plus, it’s a lot more fun with more than one local player!

The controls in Cel Damage HD are a bit different from the older DC version, but they’re not too difficult to get used to. To go forward, hold down (R2); backwards is (L2). (L1) and (R1) will let you dodge left and right. If you can attack while dodging, you earn Stunt Smacks, which are bonus damage to the opponents. Your Left Stick steers and the Right Stick lets you do stunts. To use your character’s basic attack, press (O). I find that a lot of the time, I am just continually pressing (O) while driving. (X) will use any special attacks you have picked up. If you don’t have a special attack or it runs out, (X) will do your basic attack. (Square) is a turbo boost. You can’t use it continually though; it has to charge a bit. (Triangle) will taunt your opponents, which is amusing but really doesn’t change the gameplay very much.

While you can upload your game to the server, the save files are not cross-compatible between systems, sadly. Since it’s really not that hard to complete the levels, it’s not too much of a pain to play them over and over on all the systems and it is nice to be able to buy one code and play the game on your PS3, PSVita, and PS4.

While Cel Damage HD is not a brand, new game with currently mind-blowing graphics, it is a hell of a lot of fun. You can pick up the controller and just whack away at your enemies. If you carry it around on your PSVita, you can smack your opponents around anytime! I recommend that you check out Cel Damage HD today.