There's the kind of automobile you park in a temperature-controlled garage, wash thoroughly every time a smudge shows up, and drive wearing lambskin gloves with your pinkies raised. Then there's the old beat-up kind sitting on cinder blocks in the backyard that you only use as spare bedroom when the missus throws you out for the night. You might be surprised to learn that there's a group of car enthusiasts that would walk right past your pampered little sports car and ask you how much the old '76 Chevy Caprice is selling for. Why let your daddy's gas guzzler fade away when you can smash it beyond recognition in a Crash-A-Rama?

"That's the wall! Now you know"

Test Drive: Eve of Destruction is made for the dirty racer. By "dirty," I mean not so much "covered in grit," but, "Oh, did I just force you into a wall at 106mph? Get over it!" At times I felt more like Jason Vorhees from the Friday the 13th movies than Dale Ernhardt, Jr.: I'd pursue my prey until the opportunity presented itself, then I'd put them away in the most gruesome way I could. It wasn't always possible to play so offensively (and the hockey mask interfered with my peripheral vision), but it sure did feel good to flip other drivers off cliffs or pass a lead car by forcing it sideways, blocking everyone behind us. When you're in fourth place, you can either hit the gas and try to attain and maintain the lead or you can take down the leaders one by one until yours is indisputably the fastest car on the track.

The game has a respectable amount of variety, with twenty-five single- and multiplayer events ranging from high-speed anything-goes racing to pit fighting in the demolition derby. Tracks vary greatly from one area to the next, and not all of them are in an arena. Cars range from underpowered compacts to muscle cars, school buses, and a hearse.

Story mode follows your trailer-dwelling hero (who can be assigned any one of twenty-five nicknames like "Bubba Ray," "Mr. Fist," and "The Widowmaker") as he rises in the ranks from number 100. You can drive or warp to a scrap yard for new vehicles, a garage for an upgrade or paint job, the local greasy spoon to challenge other drivers and pick up a few bucks, or just head to the next sanctioned competition. Eventually, obstacle courses and more dangerous challenges become available. They can be accessed any time after that until they are completely cleared.

The official shows consist of a series of races and derbies. Cars can get absolutely trashed after a couple of individual events, but it is possible to repair your vehicles between races. This costs a lot more to do at the track than at home, though, so it is usually wiser to do as little repair work as you can get away with while you're at the meet. The competitors don't seem to patch up much, so later events see a lot of disabled vehicles if you play it aggressively. That's why races come first and derbies later in the schedule.

Most cars, however, are not in any shape to perform double duty. Some are built for racing and others are workhorses made for the pit. A few do have both speed and durability, but these are too expensive to keep repairing, especially at the show. At a minimum, you'll want at least one super-fast and one super-strong car, or maybe two speeders and one beater. It may cost $11 to fix up a demolition tank and $185 to repair the same amount of damage on a sleeker model, and you won't exactly be rolling in dough, so choose your repairs wisely. It's a hard life for hard people.

Though there's plenty to do in story mode, there's just as much to do outside it. One to four players can select events to compete in, and a single player can take on a series of "dares" to unlock special features. The only difficult challenge is the final one, which puts you in control of a hearse that has to make "five simple laps" around the track while all the other drivers try to speed you into the afterlife. Beating all the dares and earning reputation points in the career mode unlock some interesting things, from new rides to a chicken cannon (the countryside gets real boring sometimes) to videos of real-life motorized destruction.

"Dirt is for racing, and asphalt is for getting there"

It's true. Real people do this in real life. Participating in some of the wilder events, I didn't know that they're based in fact, but it turns out otherwise sane folks hitch thirty-foot trailers to their Oldsmobiles and zoom around a track trying to force each other out of the race. They place car soccer with oversized balls (careful now). And they speed down a track, whip their cars around, and race the other way - if they survive the pile-up.

Eve of Destruction does a great job of capturing the feel of this lifestyle, with its obviously improvised obstacle courses, its battle-hardened vehicles, and all its unofficial drag races. I don't generally think of the people that set up the track when I'm racing, but the directional arrows spraypainted on the ground and on rough wooden signs helped pull me in to the game world. I almost felt as if I were out in a part of the country I've only seen from the window of an airplane, betting my baby's diaper money on how fast I can push my banged-up sedan. If only the music relied less on alt-rock faux angst and threw in some more real metal or good Southern rock. Do these destructive guys really listen to Sum 41?

Players that spend hours tweaking their rides in other games might be disappointed that upgrades are limited and cars don't generally last long, even with fairly diligent repairs. And it should go without mentioning that even when they are first purchased, they are dirty as hell, and the only thing you can do to beautify them is spray on some paint. But even that can only be done in certain areas - the doors, hood, roof, and trunk - and they'll still look dirty, just with a flaming skull or whatever painted on. Get used to loving 'em and leaving 'em.

The controls are pretty tight, depending on the car model. My preferred scheme had accelerate and brake mapped to the right analog stick and steering to the left, but there are a couple of more settings available. Find the one you like and you'll be the king of the Suicide Race in no time.

As a real-life demolition expert says in one of the unlockable movies, "Who don't like destruction?" There's no "death from above" like in Demolition Racer (or Bump 'n' Jump), but there is a lot of satisfying mayhem to be had, even if you're racing alone.

· · · Nick Vlamakis