CubeRace

[h1]I have a collection in the Steam client called "Crap" to classify the games I'll never play. CubeRace went right into it.[/h1] [b]Absolutely not recommended! Avoid even for free![/b] Review written after having played for 13 minutes, tested all four tracks, no achievements obtained, and none will ever be. [b]Gameplay:[/b] Despite having the tags "Racing" and "Simulation", CubeRace is neither of those. It's just a runner in third person perspective, where you can move your "vehicle" in 3D. Graphics are bleh, not bad for a cheap game but very simplistic. Basically you have four "tracks", straight lines with obstacles. You always accelerate and you can't brake (well that's no racer, right?) and can only move left, right, and increase altitude; which you slowly lose. The problem here is the extremely floaty controls. Once you achieve a high speed, going straight is not a chore, but a miracle whenever it happens. That completely ruins any possible fun. Whenever you touch any wall you lose speed, or halt to zero if crashing frontwise. Besides that, you have a boost and a charge, and you can shoot some obstacles and sparse enemies. There are only four tracks, which you can traverse in 3 minutes if you crash a lot. Or in 1 minute if you don't. One of the tracks was particularly easy. Oh and let me talk about the choice of a cube as floating drone. I guess designing anything remotely resembling a flying vehicle was too much. [b]And that is all.[/b] Nothing else to the game. Bad floaty controls, four tracks, and trying to get the 36 achievements (9 per track) by doing good runs. Which I think it's more a matter of luck than of skill. [b]The good:[/b] Well, I got this key from a "random key" promo thingy, so I didn't spend any money. That's a good point. You can choose which controls you use to crash: gamepad or mouse. If you don't have this game in your library, you can ignore it. That is a great point. [b]The bad:[/b] Absolutely everything else. Including the price point. You should be able to play it for free and get some kind of Steam credit in cents each time you get an achievement. In other words, get paid to play this. But you aren't paid, so don't play it. Also, I didn't know what the key would activate - I'd have given it away to someone if I knew it was for this game. Now that I've tested all it has to offer (in 13 minutes and taking my time), I know I was right in having this game in my ignore list. [b]Conclusion:[/b] would it have been a good 3D runner with less floaty controls and procedurally generated tracks? It's like asking if a Ford Pinto would have been a good car with a Honda engineer for making it, a Porsche chassis and drivetrain, and a Ferrari engine. [b]The game is simply awful, avoid at all costs, don't buy, don't even activate it for free.[/b]

Oh my god no. Avoid this game at all cost, EVEN IF ITS FREE DONT TOUCH IT!

CubeRace is less of a racing game (as it purports to be) so much as a badly made endless runner on a 3D obstacle course. You guide a cube from behind along a "death star" like obstacle filled trench run. You can shoot some of the obstacles, but this really isn't a shooter in its own right. Move up, down, left and right as you propel forwards, dodging everything you can, because if you hit an obstacle, everything starts to suck. More on that later. From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. There's no options to change the resolution for the game or customise the graphics settings. There's no way for gamers to ensure this is running at the native resolution of their displays... there's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision. There's no way for gamers to try improve the low quality graphics. The game features lazy low-polygon "retro" assets, making this look like a barely functional 3D game from the 1990s. It's unclear why the developers weren't able to arrange high quality, high polygon count contemporary assets for the game, and also irrelevant... what matters is that this looks bad as a result of their decisions, a compromise PC gamers shouldn't have to put up with. That's despite the developer using a bunch of Unity Asset Store assets (but they properly credited the creators whose work they took, so I guess this doesn't count as a deceptive/malicious asset flip). The controls and game handling are notably very floaty and unresponsive here. The cube is hard to control and if you hit any obstacles, you stop and it takes forever to get up to speed again... who thought that was a good idea? It's janky and unsatisfying to play... and any experienced gamer will tell you, the handling, responsiveness and general gameplay feel of the control scheme must be well polished for this kind of game to succeed. Unfortunately, this is something the developer seems to have phoned in, with little to no apparent gameplay testing. They dropped the ball on this one. These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. The poor quality of this game is reflected in the general public reception. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the game all-time peak player count was only ONE player. That's right, only one person ever played this at a time. When I played this for the purposes of reviewing it, I equalled the peak player count for the game. OUCH. The only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 50,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in the game is to be expected. Gamers just didn't take this low quality game seriously, and for good reason. In an insult to gamers everywhere, the game features advertising for third parties on the menu screen! This is absolutely unacceptable to pollute the user space with this kind of garbage. Does the developer think we're mobile peasants? That might be understandable (but not acceptable) if this was free... But people paid (wasted) money on this and now the developer is trying to extort even more revenue by advertising to the audience. This is completely unacceptable and is yet another reason gamers should avoid this. It's a greedy, offensive practice that simply must not be tolerated. What next, games will need adblockers? Screw that noise. CubeRace is relatively cheap at $1 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend.