Pacer
An Extremely Solid AG Racer
Very worth the wait
Summary:
While the title leaves me scratching my head, nearly everything else about Formula Fusion’s re-incarnation as Pacer has left me very impressed. With an aesthetic somewhere between the PS1 and PS3 era Wipeout games and dripping with detail, the environments here are a sight to behold. The physics model is more traditional to the genre than, say, Redout - leaning more towards the later Wipout games with just a touch of later F-Zero as well. Put another way, the racing model is approachable, intuitive, and smooth - a far cry from the formerly awkward, stilted iterations past. The craft are fun to pilot and have lots of room for customizing to suit your personal style.
– Real player with 63.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Fast-Paced Sci-fi Games.
tl;dr:
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Fantastic visuals
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Physics which scratch that Wipeout itch
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Good performance; great performance after the first patch
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Good multiplayer when you can find it
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Confusing UI
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OK music
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If you can’t progress in the campaign, use the garage!
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There are multiple weapons & items. Again, use the garage.
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If you suddenly notice your shield/health steadily dropping for “no reason”, it’s probably not a bug; you’re probably in an endurance event
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If your position jumps suddenly at the end of a lap, having been static the whole way round, that is probably also not a bug; you’re in a “speed lap” event
– Real player with 62.0 hrs in game
RingRaceR
Speed on blazing fast ringbikes through sublime, mathematically inspired tracks that are in symbiosis with players to dynamic tunes that evolve as you progress. Explore 10 different worlds with each their own theme and challenges scattered across 10 tracks each. Unlock the unique 11th track in each world that procedurally generates an endless race experience.
Compete with others locally, online and discover unique modes where you have to survive to win in an endless track or race to the middle. Race, shoot and stunt your way through in the fastest racer you’ve ever experienced.
IS THIS GAME FOR ME?
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Are you into anti-gravity racers, sci-fi racers? WipeOut, Extreme-G, F-Zero? This game is definitely for you.
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Do you like speed and excitement in racers? This game is definitely for you.
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Remember liking that cool racer called UniRacer(US)/UniRally(EU) on the SNES? You gotta give RingRacer a go. :)
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Do you enjoy music rhythm games? You just might love this one.
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Have you ever enjoyed skate games where you can do tricks? Give this game a whirl.
THE EXPERIENCES
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You’ve just beat all 10 tracks of world 1 and unlocked endless track nr.11. Endless whirls and and lights flash by as you race, and race, jump to the beat and speed to the track. You’re sure you started about 20 minutes ago, but then you look at the clock and it’s been two hours. You’ve slipped into a meditative trance.
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You’re number 3 out of 6 left from a 100 racers in a frantic survival race online. Number 2 released a poison cloud which you deftly avoided with a somersault. A hyperspeed lane is coming up and you’ve saved all your boost just for this moment to speed by them and become number one.
MODES
Campaign (Singleplayer)
Race through 10 worlds each with their distinct aesthetics, vibes and track design. Beat all 10 tracks in each world to unlock track nr.11 - a procedurally generated track in style of that world that ends only when you do. Come back to do it all again in mirrored mode.
Time Attack (Singleplayer)
Race against time, yourself and other ghosts in the mode where it’s all about beating previous records on a particular track.
Endless (Singleplayer and Multiplayer)
Race until you die in a procedural endless race that incorporates all worlds where you’ve unlocked track 11.
Survival (Singleplayer and Multiplayer)
Race in endless mode with countless others until there is only one left.
FEATURES
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Spline-based racing with unique ringbikes that can stunt, shoot and go into hyperspeed.
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100 sublime, mathematically inspired tracks to race through in 10 worlds, plus an 11th endless procedurally generated one for each world.
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Local splitscreen up to 4 players or online racing up to a 100 players!
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Living and breathing tracks that respond to your action, racing style and that of everyone else.
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Dynamic, layered music that evolves along with your progression in the race.
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Endless mode: procedurally generated racing until you die blending in all unlocked worlds.
Read More: Best Fast-Paced Sci-fi Games.
BallisticNG
Review updated after release
BallisticNG is an homage to the old PS1 generation WipEout games (the original, 2097/XL and 3). For those who haven’t played them, you pilot a jet=powered anti-gravity ship across crazy tracks, using weapons and piloting skill to reach the finish line in first place.
The game really does feel exactly like a WipEout game. The handling is a nearly perfect clone of Wip3out, the teams clearly bring to mind the eight Wip3out teams and even the announcer is straight out of Wip3out.
– Real player with 7977.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Fast-Paced Indie Games.
BallisticNG is a fun game.
There is a certain satisfaction you get when you manage to weave your way through a complex and tight track in a hover car going at blisteringly fast speeds. Other racers fly with you, leaving their colourful trails in their wake as they try and blow you and each other up in a hectic battle to get first place. The ships you pilot are striking and recognisable and all feel satisfying to pilot once you’ve learned how to fly them properly.
The game has a very simple control scheme, and the game itself follows the concept of “easy to learn, hard to master” to a T. The response to input causes the ships to swing around and really brings out the feeling of weight from the ships you pilot The faster you go, the skill ceiling gets higher and higher as you discover tricks and skips and improve your airbraking and steering skills to help get faster lap times. True tests of skill come often and the difficulty doesn’t often feel cheap. The game is compatible with keyboard and XInput controllers out of the box and you can switch between them seamlessly, as you can have both plugged in at the same time and be able to switch input on the fly.
– Real player with 396.5 hrs in game
Extreme-G 2
This is a game that requires patience in learning its quirks, the sometimes wonky bike physics and controls, but rewards you immensely if you persevere. And this is coming from someone who plays using a keyboard and is fundamentally bad at racing games.
There are a few bugs here and there (nothing game-breaking: just don’t decline a save when you’re offered one, or the game might stop offering), and I should elaborate on the wonkiness. The bikes are very fond of turning sideways or even backwards upon collision with a badly shaped wall or other bikes. Sometimes you might grind along a wall no problem, and sometimes you might snag on something and get turned around. The controls for left and right like reversing themselves at this point, as well as the gas pedal just kinda breaking, but you learn to deal with this very quickly (hint: it’s good to let go of all buttons briefly and then try moving again).
– Real player with 15.9 hrs in game
For the 2.50€ I paid for it is probably worth it. Mind that the controller support is still the worst of any steam games that I own and took some digging through the forums to find an acceptable solution. Not a decent one, but an acceptable one.
Well, I suppose that on the plus side the game actually works with decent frame rates and the WHOLE soundtrack catalogue from XG1 - 3 and both N64 and PC versions of the soundtrack is present. The soundtrack alone may justify the price tag.
But the controller support is bad, euphemistically speaking. There is no controller support in the menus, so no relaxed gaming on your TV. To get my XBone controller working, I had to set all executables to “run as admin”, then select the controller in the pre-game menu (which I have to start around 3 times on win 10 to actually start the game), then navigate to bike selection, press space bar and config my controller buttons. Shoulder Triggers are not being recognized. It’s a hassle that reeks of a lazy port. Like, every N64 emulator does this better and the only reason this version may continue to exist is stable framerates.
– Real player with 12.2 hrs in game
I See Red
A frantic Twin Stick Shooter that embraces destruction
I See Red is a frantic experience where you can wreak havoc and bring entire ships to crumble. Everything that you can interact with, you can destroy. Every cover and detail can explode into pieces. Use this to your advantage to expose your enemies. You can also brutally execute your foes with your own hands.
A never ending roguelite journey
Fight your way through the entire galaxy, invading spaceships from Human, Robot or Aliens races, each with their own weaponry, augments and more. By completing challenges, every time you begin a new playthrough, you will be able to experience new unexplored paths, more powerful skills, never before seen fearless enemies, the most incredible abilities and more. Make your runs more diverse every time you start anew and find new ways of achieving your vengeance!
A story of vengeance, violence and pain
You are an outlaw, crawling about the infinite black space, in search of the person that did something horrible to you. In fact, you are so focused on your quest that you started to not care about your surroundings that are alien to your goal, making them look muted, but what you do care the most it would always be in RED.
Now, corrupted on the inside, you’re tormented to find out what happened to you to be this way.
Key Features
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A vision that highlights in RED what’s important to you and muting what’s not.
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Your multipurpose arm, a Grappling Hook, that can latch onto the environment to bring objects at a distance, and even to your enemies to brutally murder them!
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Everything is destructible: break down a column to uncover an enemy, grab a weapon, empty it, and throw it at their face, and then do it all over again until the entire room is broken into pieces!
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Become stronger with each run by finding components that upgrade you in every way.
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UNLEASH YOUR RAGE! Every time you damage (or get damaged), your rage increases, until you can release it and mutilate every enemy in your path instantly!
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Unlock skills, passives, weapons, consumables, enemies to fight, and even ships to invade to make each playthrough unique.
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A dynamic music system that adapts to the current mood of the fight.
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
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
Rifter
This game is amazing. You should buy it.
There are certain games that are just special. This is one of them. I put it up there with Nex Machina as an impeccable arcade experience that will have you throwing your control in frustration and then rushing to the store to buy another.
It’s will feel wierd at first, but once you “get it”, the experience is invigorating. The speed, the precision, the challenge.
You’ve probably noticed the amazing aesthetic + music, which provides a lovely backdrop for your hours of playing the same level over and over trying to shave off seconds or complete one of the games devious challenges. Good stuff, but the real meat here is the gameplay.
– Real player with 67.7 hrs in game
Super fun fast-paced grappling hook platformer with smooth acrobatic movement, fantastic level and enemy design, and satisfying dash-into-enemies combat that will make you wonder why other grappling hook games don’t do combat this way. The controls make it very easy to pick up, especially considering it’s a grappling hook game, but it’s still ridiculously hard to master; I’d argue that some of the optional end-game challenge levels are even harder than the equivalent levels in Celeste.
It has a ton of levels, hidden collectibles and optional challenges, e.g. “finish this stage without touching the ground” or “finish this stage without using the grappling hook more than X times”, like the similar “only use X portals” challenges in Portal. I bought this after randomly seeing it in my Steam discovery queue and ended up getting waaaay more polish and content than I expected, along with super tight momentum-based controls. Highly recommended!
– Real player with 26.4 hrs in game
Galaxy’s Extreme
This game has a lot of potential. I would love to see replays implemented, as well as after the race machine cams, kinda like F Zero GX has. The game runs great, looks amazing, and has super tight controls. I highly recommend this game to any fans of F Zero, Wipeout, or if you just like fast racing games.
– Real player with 0.9 hrs in game
Very polished and futuristic racer. Soundtrack is very atmospheric with a hint of 90s dance! Played for about 20 minutes and there are lots of tracks and many ships to unlock which i guess the more you play and advance through the game you can unlock.
The graphics are impressive and the speed is fast but you don’t find yourself crashing into the side of the track a lot trying to control the ships! When you do crash you don’t lose a lot of time trying to catch up to the other ships and trying to gain back your position.
– Real player with 0.3 hrs in game
Super Pilot
This game is one of the “F-Zero-Inspired games” that GETS to say that it is F-Zero inspired. Because it is. The controls and layout, and overall feel are vastly similar to F-Zero GX. Racers don’t get to boost until the second lap, and of course, movement is a fair bit sensitive. The three most important things to getting the F-Zero feel.
However, it does manage to have it’s own identity, as can be seen in how boosting is done. Unlike F-Zero, boosting doesn’t deplete energy, but there’s more a “limit” as to how it can be used. Use it too much too soon, and your machine will easily wreck if you sustain a hit or two. In the event you do get wrecked, you can respawn. This is something that would likely welcome people who were intimidated by F-Zero basically punishing a fail for having players be wrecked for the entire race (more racers however should try to be as punishing in my opinion).
– Real player with 64.5 hrs in game
PITCH
Super Pilot is an arcade racer following the footsteps of F-Zero. The game follows F-Zero’s ideas pretty closely and is a perfected execution of a modern take on the mechanics. I struggle to find anything to dislike about Super Pilot and can’t wait for it to continue getting updates and eventually release out of Early Access.
MECHANICS
In this game, you won’t be using anything but pure skill and understanding of mechanics to win a race. There are no powerups and no random advantages. If you are better than the people you play with, or the artificial intelligence, you will simply be better. There’re no blue shells or lightning strikes to cheat you out of a victory. Now, this can be seen as bad because it does mean Super Pilot’s racing is very simple. At the same time, taking away the random factors of a lot of other arcade racers makes this one significantly fairer. You will win because you are better, or you will lose because you’re worse.
– Real player with 14.4 hrs in game
Lightfield HYPER Edition
It’s a very unique game. Calm one if you are not into a tight time trial. The menu navigation and time trial being always ready on the map makes the game flow extremely smooth. When you have it running on your computer, it’s hard not to just casually throw yourself in another time trial that won’t result in any meaningful records.
The ship has a very simple control, it can pitch and yaw but not roll – flip and 360 but no barrel roll. You can use ‘snap’ aligning it to a surface to indirectly roll without snapping to the surface.
– Real player with 34.7 hrs in game
Great creative racing game in space, looks like Daft Punk and TRON.
Campaign mode that starts out tutorial-like but quickly becomes challenging. This will humble you and teach you patience at hyperspeed.
A free-roam/time-trial/exploration mode, XP to be gathered, new tracks to unlock.
I am hoping there will be more online players in the near future. This game deserves more players.
Good if you like:
tough games with simple controls
adrenaline
mariokart and wipeout and mario
new ideas
neon
Worth the price most definitely.
– Real player with 29.9 hrs in game