Game # 67 of my challenge

This is my first racing game on my list and let me tell you, it's a really hard one. This is also the 4th game of Rare, one iconic game company of the 90s

First of all, there are not much plot to this game. It's a racing game and your goal is to be first. However, you are not driving any cars. You are remotely controller an RC cart. That's the only premise of this game.

The visual of this game looks really good. The game is viewed in a isometric view during the race. The bright colors makes the game looks really good. It's also really simple, but it works. You can see and identify what's on the race track. The UI is also great because they integrated the map in the bottom of the screen, which helps a lot to know when there's some turns. The Music is also really great. The starting screen is really a banger.

The controls are also really simple : Control with the D-pad, B to accelerate and A to horn (you won't really use it). However, controlling the RC is really hard. Since you are in an Isometric view, it's not always obvious on where to go when you don't know. Also, turning is really hard. This car turn so abruptly it's insane. The hit detection of the cart is also really big, so it's difficult to avoid everything.

The gameplay is pretty simple, but clever. You have some basics car stats and during your races, you can collect stuff to improve your car (like turning, acceleration and max speed). This improvements will stay for several races. This makes the game really enjoyable, since you want to get first, but also collect all the stats to help you in other races. There are also other stuff that you can collect : Frames, missiles, bombs and ammo. You read me well, you can shoot missile in this game to other cars using your horn button, but it's hard to aim them. There are also a lot of obstacles to avoid on the track that will slow you down or simply make you crash.

There's one thing that really infuriated me is that if you get last in a track, you are game over. There's no retry and you start at the beginning. This is really stupid since all the races are really short and sweet. Sometimes, a single mistake will give you a game over and you need to start all over. Also, the rubber banding in this game is crazy. They can crash and catch you right after in the next 5 seconds, but you can't do that, especially when you crash, you will sometimes start backwards. So you need to turn around your car and that makes it difficult to catch them.

Even though this game is really charming, I cannot give higher than a 3 stars to the 4th game created by Rare studios. I know they will have better game in the future.

Reviewed on Dec 13, 2023


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