Let me start out by saying that I started out liking this game...
It was a simple mind numbing game you could sink hours into. It's incredibly addictive to just get one more run in. Then I hit the wall. This is in no means a wall of a lack of skill, or pc capabilities, or even difficulty ramping up. That would be acceptable.
It was a wall of straight JANK!
You start improving your ride, or buy new ones, whatever route you take since this is an open world game. Then you see the game for what i truly is, which is a mess!
You have objectives to complete, like crashing a boss or certain number of enemies, but they can just decide to off themselves and it fails your mission. The enemies run into barriers or traffic as you're about to get them, and if it's a boss, you just lose the mission you're on. This is incredibly frustrating when there's either a time limit, a distance limit, a collection limit, or you had to catch every elite before the next gate. Some of these objectives take upwards of ten minutes, just for you to lose to the a lack of spawns, or the boss yeeting themselves into the nearest stationary object, which is their coded option if you're after them and they're about to lose. This is the main reason I'm giving this a negative review. Because the game is rage inducing in a bad way! They decided the enemy crashing causes you to fail your mission WHEN YOUR ENTIRE MISSION IS TO MAKE THEM CRASH!
I had a mission where I had to kill twelve enemies and collect some horse word letters, and I had to do it within three gates. The kicker was this was where the game decided to introduce blockades to me. You can swerve last second, and it will avoid a crash giving you a nitro boost. Not only that, if you do this to an enemy, it crashes them, gives you the boost, and doesn't cancel your lane change like crashing into their side does. So the game lulls you into a false sense of security last second dodging. You CANNOT do that to these barriers. Even better, they're the same color as the enemies are! So when you're flying through weaving around traffic, crashing enemies, you mistake them for targets. Then add the fact that you have to crash the enemies before they off themselves on the many, many barriers available. I had to restart this mission SO MANY TIMES! Either because the game just didn't spawn enough enemies (Which happened 9/10 times), or they would off themselves before I could crash them. I'm not even going to mention the failed attempts thinking barriers were enemies. Sure, they're vastly different, but when you're cruising and things flash by, you're gonna absent mindedly swerve toward enemy colors. I figured out the way to beat this was by using a slower vehicle, avoiding the boosts, and resetting until I got a spawn rate capable of fulfilling the quota. This was also how you could beat every single non vehicle specific mission. You can just use the beginning vehicle, and it will change the difficulty for the mission to the vehicle's specs.
Then you just phase through other vehicles sometimes, and by this I mean the same exact action will have different consequences just because why not, right? You can crash into the side of an enemy, and it will bounce you back into your lane, and if you have some traffic coming, it's a 50/50 whether you go through it, or it kills you. I started by using this technique to phase through bigger traffic vehicles, then the game decided on faster speeds this doesn't always work. This wasn't some crashing into different spots of the vehicle either, it just decides whether to let you survive or not on how it feels.
Even better, you sometimes just don't pick up items! You'll phase through a powerup, or horse letter, or coins/cubes for no reason other than the game just can't keep up. I would say it was improper hit boxes, but I could drive straight through an item without changing lanes, so there's no leeway unless the sprites spawn in the wrong lane occasionally.
Then you have the boost pads that are on the ground. They are DRASTICALLY off from their placement. I usually swerve into them after their indicator, because hitting them in the beginning does nothing, but driving over the space after them is where the boost actually happens. It's an easy thing to figure out, but with the amount of jank already, I'm just adding it for complete accuracy.
Most importantly, and I say this about every game, is controls. You just randomly lose control of your character. The buttons will straight refuse to respond, or continue your last action indefinitely. Why yes, I meant to go right 6 times into that massive tractor while I'm pressing left over and over while my head in game is jerking left, thanks! In a precision game where you build up speed and moments hinge on you being able to tap a button in a fraction of a second, it shouldn't lag! It also shouldn't show the character reacting to your decision, only to not complete the action!
Then you have elite enemies. You can hit every single boost, and they'll still be faster than you when they hit none of them. Even if you use your NOS, they'll just keep chugging along slightly ahead of you. The best part of this is if you slow down, they crawl to a stop just slightly ahead of you. So you have to trick them into thinking you can't catch them, then hit a boost AND use your NOS at the same time! This isn't every elite, but it's a vast majority. They also like suicide failing you, or slamming on their brakes when you go to hit them so they disappear forever behind you, but they luckily respawn. I shouldn't have to trick the game into letting me win. The even better part is elites don't count toward your enemy count if they're on a mission with an enemy crash goal.
I will say one good thing. The game crashed while I was mid rage completing a level, and when I got back on, it gave me the rewards from losing the mission. I was already mad because I was mid good run into a frustrating mission, but it didn't erase my progress at least.
I'm going to continue this torture. I'm an achievement hunter, and it says that owning five motorcycles is an achievement. Well... I have fourteen, and STIILL haven't unlocked the achievement. I'm guessing I either don't understand what a motorcycle is, or they want you to unlock every one in the game so I guess I'll do that.
Maybe I hate myself and I'm choosing this game to torture myself, or I like hate playing games as much as people liked hate watching Velma. Who knows? Either way, I give this game two big fingers!
