Clutch: I save the city…for later

As required by law, after getting the you-win! endscene, Clutch dumps you back into the city. Its story is done, and has no further demands on me. Everything after that is just play. All doors are now open to me, as demonstrated literally above.

There’s a few more goals to chase down, both for in-game rewards and out of general principle. I can replay any of the story missions to get a higher rating if I didn’t come in first in the first place, and likewise proceed further in the side events. I can of course buy all the remaining upgrades, acquire the remaining cars, and fill out my garage’s collection.

After the jump, I take off my sunglasses…

…metaphorically speaking. The game’s done, and the rest is just shambling about and gnawing the last of the meat from the bones. Mind you, eating the last shreds of meat is not an unpleasant thing. Every zombie is happiest while eating. It’s only when they can’t eat that they get agitated, which I realize is the main reason why they’re so angry at my car.

There aren’t many cars to collect in Clutch. You have your starting vehicle, which is an excellent all-rounder, sturdy enough to survive and triumph in the demolition derbies, but speedy enough (with proper boost use) to win the races. In this last playthrough, I stayed in it for almost the entire thing. You can purchase two others, with the expected trade-offs of one being speedier but flimsier, and the other being slower but tougher. After that, there are a handful of other vehicles to collect. By now, you should know the solution to the problem of how to do just that.

This last task occupies me for some time, as it requires me to destroy a certain number of each vehicle I’m collecting. It’s similar to collecting paint jobs, but more labor intensive. I primarily do this by replaying demolition derby events repeatedly until I explode the necessary number. After that, of course I have to collect all available alternate paint jobs.

When all is said and done, I’ve sunk a surprising number of hours into Clutch, and I’m a little sad that it has nothing new to offer. I’ll still load it up from time to time for a few more bloody laps, and make a few attempts at one final in-game achievement involving making a jump at an exact distance, that I’m pretty sure is bugged.

As a final note, I discovered during the course of getting together these diaries that the game is allegedly re-releasing under the title Armageddon Riders on PSN. PSN, of course, is wearing no sunglasses this month, having suffered its own forceful energy blowouts. They should consider using the solution to all problems. Bulldozer optional.

(Click here for the previous Clutch entry.)
Gary Achenbach posts as Drastic pretty much everywhere that he does, which makes it a lousy disguise.