Total Destruction

Total Destruction was built on vehicle arena battles, in which players controlled armored machines and tried to destroy each other in an enclosed space full of cover and obstacles. It was a direct vehicular variation on the principle known from on-foot arenas like Dactyl Nightmare – instead of moving on their own legs, the player maneuvered a vehicle, aimed weapons, and used the arena's terrain to take cover from the fire of opponents connected in the same match. Having to track both the vehicle's movement and the position of opponents in the space around them at the same time made the combat somewhat more demanding and tactical than in the series' purely on-foot titles, because the player had to think about the speed and direction of their own movement, not just aiming.

Visually, the game again drew on the simple, fully polygonal, textureless rendering typical of Virtuality machines, in this case applied to armored vehicles and the destructive effects of their hits. The arranged cover and obstacles in the arena also forced players to think about their route, which set the game apart from the more open, at-first-glance more straightforward arenas of other titles, adding an element of planning to the combat rather than just reflexive shooting. The sound design accompanied the battles with explosions and engine sounds; music played a secondary role to the basic feeling of tension from vehicle combat in an enclosed space full of cover.

Total Destruction was among the titles meant to show that Virtuality's arena rivalry could be successfully transferred to vehicles as well, expanding the range of experiences offered in the second generation of machines. Today it is seen as an interesting, if lesser-known, variant of the vehicle combat concept that became a common part of mainstream video games a decade later, and as proof that the idea of arena vehicle battles has roots as far back as early virtual reality arcades.

Why play it: Fans of vehicle combat will find Total Destruction an interesting early example of the arena vehicle battle concept, which did not become mainstream until a decade later.