In the years since the Atari glory days, few genres have survived the test of time as the market has shifted more and more into 3D environments. With this being said, most younger gamers will never truly know the joy of speeding around a track in the top down view that was their parents’ answer to Forza Horizon. This is probably for the best, as most of the racers in this genre are mediocre at best. The newest release from Iceflake Games, Race Arcade, is no different as it is a failure on almost every level, even when compared to games of past console generations.

The game tasks players with competing in a number of grand prix style race events, consisting of over 100 small courses that can be viewed almost in their entirety on screen at one time. The tracks are varied and feature a surprising amount of detail, despite being so basic. Each level has small touches that show a great deal of effort was put into the level design, such as cones that can be run over or the small leaves that fall in the event a player runs into a tree. The downfall to this is that the tracks are often very busy aesthetically, which makes it extremely easy to lose your vehicle among the on screen chaos. This proves to be extremely common in single player and only gets worse if you add additional human racers on the same screen, and this supports up to six players (who has this many controllers?!?!?!). Doing so results in the map zooming out so far the game is unplayable, straining not only my eyes but my five year old’s near perfect vision.

The same level of detail was not implemented when it came to designing the various cars or means of transport. Aside from changing the color of the vehicles, there is little in the form of customization and the models themselves look ripped straight from the original GTA. The saving grace is the number of number of vehicular options that can be unlocked, ranging from standard cars to F1 style racers and even UFOs. Regardless of which steed you choose, they all control like they are being driven by a coked up, drunken Uber driver. Each option controls a bit differently than the others, with the UFO being by far the worst. It is extremely difficult to tell which direction is forward, and the control scheme does nothing to try to alleviate this issue.

The gas works as it should, but steering could use a bit of work. Making matters worse, the power slide does not function half of the time. More often than not, using the mechanic ended up with me running off of the track. Fun fact: the title does not like the racers leaving the track, even for a second. I learned this the hard way when I broke ahead of the pack, but the game failed to tell me I missed some magical invisible checkpoint and I was actually in last place, opposed to first. In most games, you’d simply be able to back up and try to catch up with the rest of the pack if you make a mistake or have a poor start – in Race Arcade, any mistake will surely result in a loss or having to restart right then and there. This is partially due to the fact the reverse takes a solid two or more seconds to even respond, if it does at all. Adding to the frustration, the AI racers rarely make a single error and seem to have a bunch of hidden horsepower under their hoods, even in early races.

Completing the events in single player will unlock additional challenges and earn you money to purchase other vehicles for the campaign, although this requirement is removed for same screen play, allowing you to choose any vehicle you want. I found this to be a positive, since the campaign is overly grindy when it comes to dishing out your winnings, and it allowed me to sample each mode of transport.

Having seen most of what the Race Arcade has to offer, I can wholeheartedly say that this is one of the worst racers in history, this console generation or otherwise. Unless you are someone who enjoys putting yourself and those you love in pain via visual strain, there is nothing here to enjoy, even for free.

2 out of 10

Pros

• Well Rendered Tracks
• It’s Easy to Uninstall

Cons

• Unresponsive Controls
• Unfair AI
• Poor Driving Mechanics
• Grindy Single Player Mode

Race Arcade was developed and published by Iceflake Studios. It launched on PC and X1 in 2017, as well as PS4 on July 17th, 2018 for $9.99. The game was provided to us for review on PS4. For more on Race Arcade, check out the developer’s official site.

 

Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid paying for; 5-7 is something that is worth playing, but probably not at full price; 8-10 is a great title that you can feel confident about buying. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.

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