Most definitely more sizzle than steak but I still finished the "World Tour" with 100% gold so it was doing something right.
The art direction and overall style of Horizon Chase Turbo is far and away what it does best. It's a beautiful game full of color and design. It strikes a perfect balance of being its own modern style while still being a nostalgic throwback. All while avoiding going full 80s, 90s, synth, or whatever. It's really nice and really unique. The gameplay tries to do this too but it doesn't quite come together as well. It feels like an old arcade cabinet racer with all the drifting and frustrating collisions into the backs of cars or sign posts but then it's also insanely easy with scripted player favoring rubberbanding ever stage.
The only real challenge on the campaign mode("World Tour") is trying to collect all the blue coins every track. But even that you can kind of cheese by going slow lap one to make sure you get them. You can do this because you'll be pulled to the leader in the following laps. There's a wide variety of cars with only one real difference. If you focus on cars and upgrades with the highest steering the rest of the cars' stats are irrelevant. The track layouts also get progressively lazier as you get to each new location. The art and design stays good mind you. But the layouts, whether through player familiarity or design laziness, just get boring. It opens with tracks clearly inspired by real world racing and video game fandom and devolves into repeated gimmicks and lazy left/rights. The music is decent but I turned it off quickly as it got too repetitive even in the small doses.
But where it works is the drop in and play aspect. Races are rarely longer than two or three minutes. The game runs full blast on the Steam Deck. It's just one of those games you can get in and out of. Load it up, cruise to victory, feel a false sense of accomplishment as the gold "Super Trophy" flashes on screen, rinse and repeat a couple times, shut down, and go on with your day. That said, once I completed the campaign, I had no desire to check out any of the other fluff. The racing product simply isn't good enough for me to want to do "Adventures" or "Endurance". I got what fun I could out of it. I will note that the menus got randomly unresponsive for me at times. Hangs or something. Especially after unlocking a vehicle. Might've been a Steam Deck thing. But otherwise runs flawlessly.
It looks great and is just passable enough fun to drive. Great on the Steam Deck.
[copied from my Steam review]
The art direction and overall style of Horizon Chase Turbo is far and away what it does best. It's a beautiful game full of color and design. It strikes a perfect balance of being its own modern style while still being a nostalgic throwback. All while avoiding going full 80s, 90s, synth, or whatever. It's really nice and really unique. The gameplay tries to do this too but it doesn't quite come together as well. It feels like an old arcade cabinet racer with all the drifting and frustrating collisions into the backs of cars or sign posts but then it's also insanely easy with scripted player favoring rubberbanding ever stage.
The only real challenge on the campaign mode("World Tour") is trying to collect all the blue coins every track. But even that you can kind of cheese by going slow lap one to make sure you get them. You can do this because you'll be pulled to the leader in the following laps. There's a wide variety of cars with only one real difference. If you focus on cars and upgrades with the highest steering the rest of the cars' stats are irrelevant. The track layouts also get progressively lazier as you get to each new location. The art and design stays good mind you. But the layouts, whether through player familiarity or design laziness, just get boring. It opens with tracks clearly inspired by real world racing and video game fandom and devolves into repeated gimmicks and lazy left/rights. The music is decent but I turned it off quickly as it got too repetitive even in the small doses.
But where it works is the drop in and play aspect. Races are rarely longer than two or three minutes. The game runs full blast on the Steam Deck. It's just one of those games you can get in and out of. Load it up, cruise to victory, feel a false sense of accomplishment as the gold "Super Trophy" flashes on screen, rinse and repeat a couple times, shut down, and go on with your day. That said, once I completed the campaign, I had no desire to check out any of the other fluff. The racing product simply isn't good enough for me to want to do "Adventures" or "Endurance". I got what fun I could out of it. I will note that the menus got randomly unresponsive for me at times. Hangs or something. Especially after unlocking a vehicle. Might've been a Steam Deck thing. But otherwise runs flawlessly.
It looks great and is just passable enough fun to drive. Great on the Steam Deck.
[copied from my Steam review]