Neon Drive
An 80’s Love Letter That Just Falls Short
Don’t let my “Not Recommended” rating dissuade you - Neon Drive is the most intense, addicting, visually arresting rhythm game that I sadly cannot recommend outright to everyone. It’s at times like these that I wish I had a different option other than a simple “Yes/No” answer. This game is good - very good in fact - but it has problems that prevent it from being great. If you love rhythm games, challenging difficulties, or the 80’s aesthetic then you’ll probably love this game as much as I do. However, if not then don’t let this game be your introduction.
– Real player with 21.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Automobile Sim Rhythm Games.
I had fun with this game but can’t recommend it due to issues that make the hard/insane difficulties far more difficult than they really need to be.
The plane level has a loop that basically doesn’t interact with the music at all, forcing you to just figure it out via trial and error.
The falling traffic section has cool music that doesn’t help you in any way. It’s just falling enough times to memorize a safe path through.
The Robot level has a series of hurdles that require the first jump made be well timed. There is no useful music for the first jump, in fact there’s a misleading series of notes that will get you killed if you use them. The following hurdles all have super useful notes to help, but this doesn’t matter if your first jumps timing is off, you’ll die on the later hurdles if it is. ((I guess it’s possible to ajdust your timing between hurdles, but that’s like, tasbot levels of reaction time. Not what rhythm games are about)) This problem exists on other levels, but it’s not as pronounced as it is in the robot level, due to its unique mechanics.
– Real player with 15.6 hrs in game
Redout: Enhanced Edition
Game is good, and hard. Visuals are great and music is quite good too (and fitting). If you have questions/concerns, go to the official discord (search for redout). I can go more into that later. But, I would like to address certain inane negative reviews that are popping up. By not allowing comments, others can’t explain the issues that they bring up, which is pretty unfair for the game. Hopefully this will clarify some things.
How it Runs; Crashes:
My low end 2012 computer with onboard graphics runs the game decently with the lowest settings, but the problems are mainly from when there are a lot of AI racers with you, especially on parts of certain maps. I seem to get from 28-48fps if no weapons are used, AI probably taking a few frames off. Played off and on since late 2018, a lot recently. I tend to crash when I use Repair Drone (great for new people but shouldn’t rely on it) on certain tracks, and sometimes I crash during vs AI races, presumably because of them using said powerup, but this is usually rare (helps to get out in front of the pack I think). But my computer/gfx are bad, so. Download the demo. It is an old version and I think it ran slightly worse, and the physics are a bit different, but you can get an idea of how it plays, and if it will likely run well. If you’re worried about crashes/bugs, ask the Discord for more details on what can happen and how to avoid issues. I am not bothered that much by most of it, and I think I can avoid most all of it (other than Repair Drone crash on some tracks).
– Real player with 923.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Automobile Sim Futuristic Games.
6/1/18: Although everything I wrote in this review is true, I NO LONGER SUPPORT REDOUT.
Thank you.
“REDOUT: Enhanced Edition” is (oddly enough) advertised as a futuristic AG (anti gravity) racer that’s a throwback to the “past” of computer games, perhaps because today’s DEVs feel players don’t want something new in their futuristic racing games. Fortunately, this reviewer/player is neither hampered nor guided by those comparrisons, and so this review (and reviewer) will ignore them generally, presuming experienced players are far more knowledgeable. However, since potential REDOUT consumers are clearly expected to know earlier racers well enough to base this purchase specifically on that knowledge, I will touch on gameplay only superficially, and place focus on where this game is less than perfect and may dissapoint players. (In many ways, REDOUT feels like a game BEGGING to be completed contextually.)
– Real player with 78.5 hrs in game
Miami Cruise
A simple and fun game with good visuals, awesome soundtrack. Arcade style game all about topping your high score. A few cases of poorly translated English are mildly annoying.
– Real player with 18.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Automobile Sim Early Access Games.
If you click out of the game on the crash screen, and then click back in, you won’t be able to hit restart or menu, you have to exit out the game. But I love the game so far, I wish there were options to permanently enable certain bonuses and maluses, specifically pixelate.
Update: Also about half of my deaths come from stupid drivers or what I would consider unfair deaths. When a yellow car spawns right in front of me out of nowhere, not only is it hard to react that fast to it, but it’s also almost impossible even if you do react just based on the “slipperyness” of the car (which I do love that mechanic). The other is a little more questionable, the cars dont follow the road, if they come to a turn they don’t turn at all, so you have to be reminding yourself that when you are trying to make a sharper turn with AI around. Now I’m not sure whether the cars not following the road is intentional, or is just yet to be added, but if it is to be considered intentional, it doesn’t make sense why even on some straightaways, very rarely a car will be veering in one direction, often causing death of the player.
– Real player with 10.9 hrs in game
Criminal Pursuit Force
I originally went into this game thinking “Oh, it’s just a bit of fun. Nothing too serious, I’ll review it as such.”
However, I reported the games main flaw being that criminals always end up getting stuck in the same place under the bridge. I did this so the developer had time to fix the bug before I reviewed it. I’ve since went back and played only to find the bug still hasn’t been fixed after he assured me it had been.
This game doesn’t have a lot going for it, it’s a basic loop of crashing your car into a criminals car in order to apprehend them. Then the level restarts and you do it over and over again. Don’t worry though, they’ll always be under the bridge at the local criminal stop point. There’s nothing else to it, that’s it.
– Real player with 4.0 hrs in game
I like trash games very much and i had a blast with this game. So, i recommend this game to all trash fans. But for the others, i say just no, this is a really bad game. In Criminal Pursuit Force you are a female cop (only visible in the missions screens as a picture) hunting bad guys. The goal of every level is to catch an enemy car with your police vehicle. I like that kind of game and that is why i bought it. But there are so many things that are just awful. The graphics are outdated and there is just one small map (for all missions). There are not many sound effects in the game, just a police-radio, which tells you the same thing over and over, and a police siren. No engine sounds or other effects (maybe that is just a bug). The music is ok, but there are not many tracks. The worst part of the game are the ai-drivers, the normal ones and the enemy. I never saw such stupid drivers in a game, they even can not stay on the road. You have to see that for yourself to believe it (watch may video under the text). And on top of that all, the game is not finishable because in one mission, the enemy car is not findable. So my final verdict for the game, buy it if you want to laugh about the most stupid drivers in gaming history, otherwise avoid it.
– Real player with 1.3 hrs in game
FlatOut 2™
Best game I discovered by accident on PS2 back in 2006.
– Real player with 14.0 hrs in game
best fighting game
– Real player with 12.3 hrs in game
Crazy Taxi
“Like Skyrim with taxis” 10/10 -IGN.
“Is that GTA V ?” 11/10 -Random kid walking into my room.
So, let’s begin to be serious. This game is criticized by a lots of players because this is the XBox Live Arcade Version. It can be considered as Crazy Taxi 1.1. The differences that players seems to disapprove is the soundtrack that is a complete new one and the fact that the Kentuchy Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut trademarks were switched to Fried Chicken Shack and Pizza Parlor.
So, here start the personal opinion, I really enjoyed that game. You’re constantly having fun without raging every five seconds. The new songs list is good, the controls still really good (a way to show your arcade skills) and the new patch Sega released for all Sega Dreamcast Collection games gives you the possibility to use your own buttons and add a FXAA to your graphism. The new achievements are very easy, you can do them in a single evening if you understand the engine (If you don’t you can decrease the time difficulty.) Plus, the four characters are still really cool. My personal best is Gus (ಠ‿ಠ).
– Real player with 80.2 hrs in game
Originally I thought this port was absolute crap since a lot of the soul was stripped away, namely the original soundtrack and licensed locations. But this is a PC port, and modding exists. So if you know how to download a mod pack , and you’re proficient in dragging and dropping files in the right place (scary!), then you’re literally a few MB away from playing the game as God intended.
As for the game itself, this game is absolutely wild. The premise is simple: pick up passengers, drop em off as fast as you can. Easy, right? Well unless you git gud , you’re gonna find it difficult to rack up a nice juicy score at the end, which is where the skill portion of this game comes into play. Give yourself enough time and you’ll be setting some amazing scores with what you learn (although watching unskilled players will look like its being played in slow motion). And hey, while you’re learning how to consistently do limiter cuts, you’ll be listening to some hard-hitting punk rock (The Offspring & Bad Religion) that makes this game stand out from other arcade games of the same era.
– Real player with 18.9 hrs in game
Car Mechanic Simulator 2014
Really cool-looking game about fixing broking cars in your garage. But… will you like it? Would I recommend it for you to buy? That’s depends of what are you expecting from this game, in the first hand.
Let me tell you how it works, right from the start: you’ll find yourself locked inside the garage, with some broken car and notation of what you should do with it. You can disassemble the most of the car’s engine, suspension and exhausts. You can fix some of those disassembled parts on the workbench, or buy new ones in the PC installed in your garage. Reassemble the car with new or fixed details, and they’ll send you next one. After some time you’ll get enough “free” money to “buy upgrades”, namely, the discounts for the spare parts market, ability to squeeze the next client for more money, ability to notice some of the wrecks with your blind eye, without any expertise, and, finally, ability to turn screws faster… Which is really suitable, especially when exhausts needs fixing.
– Real player with 41.5 hrs in game
The primary objective of a simulator is to accurately recreate the feeling and control of completing an existing real world task, like driving, managing, farming, dating, etc. Obviously, not all real world tasks are entertaining, in fact, most are repetitive jobs you work day after day for a paycheck. The draw of a well made simulator is the ability to experience a career virtually that you may never have the chance to experience in real life. Sometimes this can be interesting and educational, sometimes a lot of fun, and sometimes extremely boring. It’s up to the individual to decide if the simulator is fun or repetitive, which makes this genre extremely difficult to review. Do I review it based on its entertainment value alone, or how accurately it depicts the task it’s trying to recreate?
– Real player with 40.2 hrs in game
Driver® Parallel Lines
So firstly off the bat I should say I have WAY more playtime on this, but I recently bought it on Steam and haven’t played that much, so don’t go ‘‘OMG u only haev 2 hrs, wtf m8’’ on me.
So. Driver® Parallel Lines.
This was one of the first games I ever played on my computer and I absolutely adored it.
It is one of the most underrated Driver games, and I recently even saw some hate on it which was really unecessary to be honest, cus this is one of my favorites from the Driver series.
So the price is in fact aswell really low and I think you should get it, cus it’s worth it.
– Real player with 40.9 hrs in game
Well, I always kinda had strange relations with Driver series. Though I usually preferred it to the widely popular GTA, because driving away from lots of cops through city streets was more interesting for me than just making chaos and rampage on streets, I didn’t understand why it tried to parody GTA so much after the second title. The only similar thing between those games was open city, but ideas and gameplay were very different. So, Driv3r was a big disappointment and financial failure, however the series didn’t close and in 2006 we got Parallel Lines. And initially, you think that maybe that is a Driver game we all need: a lot of cars, ability to customize them, a lot of car-related side activities and story taking place in 70s – golden age of muscle cars and car-related movies, what can go wrong? Well, though all these things are technically in the game, the physics itself downgraded quite even in comparison to the third title: cars don’t have inertia, physics is very arcade and you can never lose control of your car even if you really try to. So in the end it feels like you are driving some radio-controlled toy cars, rather than big powerful muscle cars. In addition to all this the game still for some reason tries to parody GTA: yeah, though shooting became much more convenient since the previous game, it still quite far from what GTA had. And no, I do not say that Driver should forget about the guns once and for all, they can be a way to diverse gameplay a bit, like shooting while chasing another car or shooting chasers from the back seat, but building whole levels around shooting only is a very bad decision. At least because it instantly shows shooting system’s problems and at most because the game’s called Driver, not Shooter!
– Real player with 25.4 hrs in game
Touring Karts
i received this game for free as a part of the pre-release testing phase. with that being said, i offered to pay for access and had been anticipating this title for months before it released from the first time i saw a post about it on FB.
the game hit a lot of check boxes for me right out of the gates such as
[x] visually appealing and performant
[x] good use of quality audio
[x] multiple control schemes to suit multiple play styles (the virtual steering wheel in a recent update worked very well and was VERY fun compared to the original implementation)
– Real player with 59.2 hrs in game
Add me on steam and DISCORD. Anyone who wants to play this game. TRAMPASAURUSREX #5046 Simply one of the best VR games around. I was sure I was gonna be dissapointed, cause I’m just not as into racing games as I was. But because I used to be I still kinda know what to look for. While this may be simplistic in the racing mechanics, it is amazing fun. It actually isn’t completely simple. Easy to play using the toggle on a standard motion controller. But if you use the virtual wheel, a bit of a challenge at first. I put the sensitivity all the way down, and for a round wondered if it could even be made to work consistently. Then I figured it out. I was just moving my wheel arm around a bit too much. I sat it my girls rocking chair with a pillow under me and one on my back. lol Footstool in front of that. I laid my arm a little on the arm rest, hand and controller angled toward my lap/legs. I found that if you just rest your arm in the same position, and rotate your hand like you are holding a little wheel, which you are, then it is perfect. I figured out that I can have even more control of my car with the virtual wheel. Only took me three rounds to get the sweet spot. Use the centering button like this. Lean forward a little bit, hit center, then relax back. Gives ya a little more space. Also makes watching the rear view mirrors easier, and also give ya some leaning room for throwing stuff behind you like an a$$#@$^. lols I adore this game. Great for parties, great for online. Even the bots are fun. The ability to combine powerups is awesome. I was rocking super chickens a lot. lols But I wiped everyone else out and lapped them with a triple chicken bomb. hahha. The racing aspects are fun. The courses are fun, with crazy events breaking them up, like a giant monkey throwing stuff at all of you. You can be in the front and suddenly be at the end. You can also, with some smart driving and use of powerups switch that and go right past everyone to number one. The power ups require some aiming and actual skill, for most, and many of them, if you are very sharp, and have good instincts and reflexes, can be dodged. Everything in this game is perfectly balanced. If this is early access then I cannot wait to see what they do with it next. The people asked for a virtual wheel, and the devs delivered almost immediately. It really does feel like you are driving it with a little toy wheel when you get your hand in that sweet spot and figure it out. Really adds to the immersion and fun. Plus I hear it supports almost all driving wheels. The devs have really outdone themselves and anyone else with this game. Love it. 💖💖💖💖 Little tip, don’t grind the break button when drifting. It seems to work better most of the time to tap it. Hooks those corners nice and tight. Also gets you out of trouble. Of course if you know you have an enemy coming up on you, and you saw their weapon, sometimes you can break, drop back behind them dodging their weapon, and then use your on them. Depending on the situation. I like to play tricky. lol Also there is just enough bullying to make it viable, require a lot of skill, and enough to make it fun. If you see someone close to a wall and they have to turn into a corner. Give them a little ram and they slam. hahah. For when you don’t have a powerup, or you wanna save it for the next guy. Again, a great game. This game would also be fun on any platform, whether it is flat screen or vr. It’s mostly a game for people who like to be friendly jerks.
– Real player with 22.5 hrs in game
FlatOut
One of my top favorite vehicular combat racing games, and for damn good reasons. Also, one of the first games I ever remember playing, back when this came and I was 8 years old.
Pros:
-
Graphics have aged well. Sure, there’s no realtime shadows or reflections, etc..but still all in all not terrible graphics for 2004.
-
Great sound design. Crash sounds, both obstacle and car collision, are good and really add to the satisfaction of impacts. And the cars' engine sounds are really roaring and crisp.
– Real player with 136.3 hrs in game
A lot of people seem to be writing nostalgia reviews (to the point where “nostalgia” is not only the main theme, but also the only noun present in the whole review). So here’s a newcomer’s take for a change.
Flatout is many things, but firstly and foremostly it’s a racing game. You buy a car, you race AI opponents, get money to buy upgrades, or better cars. Complimenting that you have various ridiculous - but apparently quite iconic - events, which range from demolition derby to a variant of darts where you crash your car into a solid obstacle at speed to hurl yourself through the windshield and onto a gigantic net which serves as the dartboard.
– Real player with 57.3 hrs in game