The idea of Racing Glider is supremely interesting: take the white knuckle thrill of rally driving and upgrade it with the sleek style of sci-fi hovercraft. I immediately purchased this, even when it was in Early Access, as I wanted to see how this product fleshed out. A month after the official release and I finally get around to trying it, and it's quite literally a mess.
Racing Glider is not a game. It's not even a demo. It's a bunch of high quality assets pasted into a generic racing engine and sold as a finished product. To start, the game only has two vehicles which, as far as I could tell, handle identically. The only difference is the tracks they have access to, which makes no sense given that they handle so similarly. I could understand making tracks specifically designed for each craft, but there's nothing unique about either of them, so just let us play on all tracks with both craft. The tracks themselves are pretty in screenshots, but in motion they are pretty awful. Terrible amounts of pop-in, criminal amounts of reused assets and a lack of originality in the course design plagues each one. To give the true 'rally' feel, each one of these is a point-to-point course. There are no circuits that I could see, and no multi-stage events either. You simply load the game up, pick a track, race to the end, then go back to the menu.
The game lacks so many basic features that it's astounding this can be sold. The main menu has three options: Play, Settings or Quit. Settings is literally just graphics options. No keybinding, no assists/gameplay tweaks, no audio configuration. Even the in-game and post race menus are bare bones. You can't restart a race if you make an error, and you can't try again if you fail to achieve a medal. Once you start a race, you MUST finish it, in its entirety, or just go back to the main menu.
Even the concept of futuristic rallysport racing is dead on arrival. There's no difference in handling whether you're on futuristic neon track or pure Earth dirt. There are no pace notes, so you must rely solely on your eyes and reflexes to get good times. Even then, the horrible track collision will mess up your runs as you will hit walls you aren't touching or get sent flying off the track because you struck some geometry in a weird way. There's also a boost feature, but it's so inconsistent that I wonder if it even works most of the time.
With regards to sound, it's also pretty unremarkable. The craft have identical engine hum that barely changes no matter how fast you're going. There are some nice tunes but they absolutely do not fit a racing game. Not to mention the stages are so short you'll only ever be hearing the first 30 seconds of a song or so.
What we have here is a game that was made for quick cash, and they sure got me. I requested a refund but it's been so long since I initially bought this game that I'm doubtful I'll get my money back. Once again Early Access burns me and many other players with the promise of "it'll be good one day." This will never be good. The developers took our money, turned off the Early Access sign and dipped.
