Victory Run is the next original game for the console. It's an interesting early game as it's a race in the Paris-Dakar Rally. It's all about going fast and making it to the goal in a good amount of time. That said though it's got it's problems.

One interesting feature of this game is you can buy up to 20 parts that's put into multiple categories. You'll want to play it a few times to know which ones are more important to keep more of or less of. I can't think of another game before this that did anything similar to this mechanic though granted I barely play games in this genre.

Now about playing it a few times, that's something you will do if you don't want to use save states or rewind. This game is ruthless in it's design. You not only have to make sure you don't damage the parts you have because you can't replace them until a track is over. You also have all of the cars and obstacles that will waste your time and you have no time to mess around.

There's also two different time limits. There's one that you want to reach to be on the top 5 for the rally. If you fail to reach this, you'll have a small amount of time to reach the end otherwise it's game over and you'll have to do everything all over again. It doesn't help it's pretty strict.

The worst part about the game though has to be these dirt tracks where you not only go slower but I swear the controls get worse when you're on these. They make too many of the tracks like this but maybe the real event of this does the same thing.

The graphics are nice. I love the day and night that happens in real time while you're driving. Though the actual look of stuff like the environments is nothing special. I do like the parts of the track that go down and have a nice depth to them. The obstacles like other vehicles also have no variety which might be a space limitation. The music is good but there's not much of it sadly. Also what's with the US cover having a red car? It's not red in game. Weird.

Victory Run may seem like nothing now in which that might be the case but of the 3 games that aren't Shanghai, this one is my favorite. But that said it's still nothing good, it's just ok. It's not a long game and the game knows this because of how difficult it can be. You could do much worse and I at least enjoyed my time. Just wish some of the annoyances weren't there. Unless you're very curious, it's a pass.

Reviewed on Nov 10, 2022


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