Cel Damage is a vehicle shooter in which players compete against one another using weapons to either gain smack points or stop other opponents from achieving their goal, depending on the game mode.

Weapons include black holes, boxing gloves, grenades, chainsaws,[1] baseball bats, chain guns, axes, and freeze rays.

Cars and game objects can realistically be sliced into pieces, flattened, frozen, shattered, shredded, impaled, lit on fire (and subsequently burn to a crisp and fall into ashes), and more.

[8] Chris Hecker, editor of Game Developer magazine, described Cel Damage's cartoon-style graphics as "state-of-the-art for computer-game physics".

[14][15][16][17] Gerald Villoria of GameSpot called the Xbox version's visuals "impressive," and stated that the player "can easily think that [they are] playing a real-time cartoon".

[2] Vincent Lopez of IGN said the cel shading in the same version "was one of the best examples of the effect on the market," but that the game play is too difficult due to both the computer players and the small arenas.

[35] Brian Davis of GameSpy praised the same version for its characters and maintaining its cartoon feel, but found that the game play was too short.

"[36] In 2002, Pseudo Interactive created an early prototype for a sequel to Cel Damage and pitched the project to Electronic Arts, Sega, Ubisoft, and Midway Games.