[h1]A need for [strike]speed[/strike] braking early before a turn so you don’t flip the car. [/h1]
Cranks & Goggles is a simulation-focused, top-down racing game which recently released on Steam through the Early Access program. C&G features twenty-six different cars across four different classes from the 1920’s and 1930’s. You can race these cars on sixteen tracks from across the world either through the game’s Quick Game mode or the Career mode with a multiplayer mode planned for later in development.
Being a racing game, most of your time in C&G will of course be spent racing around a track in your car and let me tell you, it’s rather challenging. It turns out that race cars from the 20’s and 30’s, fitted mainly with thin tyres and driving on predominantly dirt/sand tracks are fairly difficult to handle. The cars aren’t all the same though, even within a class there’s huge variation. The car you start with in the career mode is reasonably stable and is capable of turning at speed without losing traction but then one of the ‘better’ cars in the class is much faster but I found I couldn’t go around corners as fast without losing control. The actual vehicle physics in the game are very good (although it does go a bit crazy sometimes when you crash into something) and it seemed fairly realistic to me, though I’m by no means an expert on how 20’s and 30’s cars handle.
While some cars may look better than others on paper, how well you perform in a race really comes down to how well you can drive the car you’re using. When I started doing C Class races in the career mode I had enough money to buy the best car (on paper) so I did. When I started using it I realised that despite it having the best stats I really didn’t like it so I went back and bought a different car and ended up doing far better in the races with it. It does take a while to familiarise yourself with how a car behaves, it took me a few attempts to perform well with the first D Class car but once I’d got the hang of it I had great fun.
That’s one of C&G’s greatest strengths, the variation between all the cars. You can ‘perfect’ your performance with one car but as soon as you buy and start using a new car it’s like you’ve completely started over and you have to learn how to play the game again. I found that it took me at least one full race (three laps) to get to grips with a new car and considering each class has four races followed by an event (apart from A Class which has three events) I’d say that’s pretty good. Those looking for a more casual experience might not be so keen on it but I find the variation helps keep the game interesting over the course of the career mode and it also adds to the overall realism.
Sticking with in-game variation, there’s also a good amount of variation with the game’s sixteen currently available tracks. Some tracks see you hurtling through the Italian countryside, some tracks take you to the Middle Eastern desert and some have you flying around tight corners in an English port. I’m presuming that more tracks will be added since it’s in Early Access at the moment but even if there aren’t any plans for more tracks I’d say that the sixteen in the game offer enough variation for the game’s reasonably small asking price. There are a couple of tracks which are just different versions of one another but other than that they’re unique tracks from across the world.
Although I’ve enjoyed what I’ve played of Cranks & Goggles so far, I do have a couple of problems with it. My first problem is that the AI opponents don’t always appear to react to the player. There were a number of occasions where, due to what my car was doing, I would have expected a nearby opponent to change their course to avoid me but they didn’t. My other main gripe with the game is that you can’t sell any of your cars which means that if you don’t have enough money for a car that you need/want you’ll have to go back and re-play races you’ve already done. Lastly, there’s no opponent difficulty option. I found this frustrating because, while I found the D Class races to be fairly challenging, I found the C Class races to be far too easy. It would have been nice to have the option to increase the difficulty of the C Class races I found particularly easy. I didn’t find any of these issues to be bad enough to detract from my overall enjoyment of the game but they’re definitely worth considering.
The only other issue I had was with the way the Quick Game mode works in the game, though I’d imagine most people will be playing the game’s career mode anyway. The problem is, you can’t choose what car or track you want to play on, it’s random. Not only would it be more enjoyable, in my opinion, if you could choose the car and track, it’d also be quite helpful for choosing what cars you want to buy in career mode which would help avoid wasting your race winnings on a car you end up not liking.
There are a couple more things which, while not really issues, could use some improvement. Personally, I’d like to see either a bigger mini-map or a more zoomed out mini-map. Since you can’t see too far ahead you’ll rely on the mini-map for knowing what’s coming up and while the currently implemented map is acceptable, it’d be good if you could see a little further ahead with it just to make it a tad easier to prepare for turns. The other thing is I’d like to see full controller support. The store page does say C&G has partial controller support but the in-game control options won’t let you bind controller inputs so I’m not quite sure what the partial support is. C&G plays surprisingly well with KB&M but it’d be great to at least have the option of using a controller.
Just a couple of small details I’ll wrap up my review with. At the start of your career game you can create a custom driver, editing their helmet, goggles, facial hair and face shape/colour. The portrait you create is used for the end-of-race leaderboard but what you choose also changes how the driver of your car looks. After purchasing cars you can buy upgrades for them. There are two upgrades for every car and what the upgrade changes (out of Handling, Acceleration and Speed) seems to depend on the car rather than its class. Just as the prices of the cars increases with ascending class, the price of upgrades increases too. However, if you’ve got the cash to splash they’re worth picking up. Lastly, the game has a great 20’s/30’s soundtrack which plays on loop in the background. It helps to make the game feel authentic and it is genuinely good music though they seem to repeat quite regularly so it might be nice to see a couple more songs added in.
[h1]Verdict [/h1]
Cranks & Goggles is a thoroughly enjoyable simulation-focused, top down racing game with plenty of car and track variation. It’s well priced for what’s offered in the game and with more content coming (including multiplayer) as it progresses through Early Access I’d say it’s well worth picking up for fans of racing games.
[i][url=http://steamcommunity.com/groups/lonerangerreviews]Lone Ranger Reviews.[/url][/i]
El K.
