Motorama is an older game from 2014. It's a venerable 10 years old at the time of this review. It's a highly derivative 1950's themed racing game that really, really sucks. Definitely one of the worst games I've seen in the categories of "not obviously an indie game" and "not obviously an asset flip cash grab". But, we can't completely rule that out.
I'm not really sure if Motorama is an asset flip. Some elements of this game certainly make it seem like the developer put some effort into assembling some kind of original here. On the other hand, a lot of the game assets don't seem like they were created by the developer, but they haven't credited any asset creators for supplying assets, which might be a case of plagiarism. The game engine itself is Unity's CarX car physics engine, but the developers actually bothered to credit that engine, so at least that part isn't plagiarism.
There's no evidence that the other game assets are just ripped off someone else, so we need to give the benefit of the doubt... regardless, asset flip or not, the quality here is indistinguishable from many asset flip/cash grab scams, and that's a problem in itself.
Taking this shovelware seriously as if it was a genuine attempt to make a game, it doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
The game assets are far from bleeding edge, with lowish polygon counts and somewhat low resolution textures, making this look like it's at least 10 years old. 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 poor in comparison to more professionally produced games as a result of their decisions.
The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers, left handed gamers or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts.
In a sheer insult to PC gamers, the developer has locked out keyboard and mouse controls on this game. The developer demands, without compromise, that you must use a console peasant children's toy gamepad to play this garbage game. This is simply unacceptable, developers must never dictate to gamers how a game is to be consumed.
This looks a lot like it was designed for consoles, but released on Steam instead by mistake. While this is on PC, it has all the hallmarks and deficiencies of a console game, from the clunkier than needed control scheme to the less than cutting edge graphics. There's 10's of thousands of PC games on Steam, and PC gamers deserve only the best. This might not appeal to many gamers due to the lack of PC-centric design. It's unclear why this never made it to the video game console appliances it seems to have been designed for.
These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.
The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 13 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, 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 100,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected.
So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam?
Motorama has the pathetically optimistic price of $20 USD, for which you could easily get any number of older AAA games. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, and the questionable ethical nature of the developer and/or their associates (as outlined above), this is impossible to recommend.
For comparison, the $20 asking price for this game could get you games like "Pillars of Eternity II", "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt" or "Cities: Skylines". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this.
