TearItUp® Remix

The story is not important, mostly because it never rises above the standard premise of an underground competition where the winner takes home five million dollars. Although several voiced characters appear during your climb through the rankings, none of them significantly enrich the experience. The first thing worth clarifying is that this is not a traditional driving game. It behaves much more like an arcade title with a structure similar to a drag racing challenge. Each stage places you in a straight line sprint against a group of opponents or with a special objective, and all you need to do is cross the finish line before time runs out. Strategy is extremely limited. You simply hold the throttle and activate the turbo boost whenever it becomes available. Steering is not part of the game, although you are still required to move left and right during the central mechanic, which involves jumps. Jumps are scattered along the track, yet they are not visible in advance. You’ll simply have your car suddenly launched into the air without much warning. Once airborne, your job is to press left or right in order to move a guideline and match it with another line so that the car lands straight on its wheels. The system is simple but can quickly become frustrating. The alignment line never changes according to the stage, so if you land and immediately get thrown into another jump, you will not know to prepare for it until you have already failed a few attempts. What’s worse, the system is never explained, except with one short message in the first race, so you will get stuck very quickly because you won’t be able to win anything. The car selection is acceptable but still rather limited. Vehicles are grouped into three tiers and each tier contains a small handful of three or four cars, with at least one locked until you defeat a boss. There are also three vehicle classes. These include the 4x4 class, which consists of pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles, the trailblazer class, which contains sports cars, and the monster truck class. Even with these distinctions, the choice does not feel meaningful. Cars are presented in a sequence where each next vehicle is more expensive and better. There is no real decision making, only a gradual replacement of old cars with newer and faster ones. Customization options are minimal. The first area you can modify is the color, although you can only choose from a small group of preset shades and patterns. You cannot freely select your own color. You can also swap body features such as bumpers and spoilers, but again, only a tiny selection is available. Both color changes and body modifications are free, yet they offer so little variety that customization quickly becomes forgettable. Upgrades are the only elements that require payment, but this system is just as limited. There are only three upgrades available. The first and least expensive one is the turbo, which also happens to be the most useful item in the entire game. The next upgrade is an invulnerable roof, which serves almost no purpose and feels like a waste of money. The final option is a set of spike proof tires that help only in stages containing spikes that occasionally lead to shortcuts. The game’s overall structure is straightforward. You play stages to earn money, buy the next car, and repeat the process until you complete all three tiers. Stages are selected on a map, although the options provided are extremely bare. If you ignore the speed and stunt test drive stages, which add little to the experience, you are left with event stages that are required for progress and follow in order, and quick race or quick destruction stages. The quick stage place you in one of the two available tracks and serves as the primary method for earning money. Stages alternate, so if you get the one with annoying jumps, you can easily quit and try again on a more flat road. Winning pays out a generous reward, which makes purchasing new cars relatively easy, although there’s still a grind for the expensive ones. Event stages introduce some variety, although most are governed by time limits. Besides standard races, some events ask you to use a monster truck to crush parked cars, while another event turns the race into a shootout where you must drive and aim with the mouse at an enemy vehicle. There is also a delivery mission where you need to carefully transport a crate without dropping it. A few additional variations appear as you progress. However, many events are locked behind specific car requirements, or puzzle-like stages you need to repeat several times to get right. If you choose to overlook the repetitive gameplay, you might still struggle with the excessively slow loading screens. They are unusually long for a game that consists mostly of straight and empty tracks that take only a minute to complete. Even after loading finishes, you must click a small button in the corner to proceed. Some background scenery exists in the tracks, but nothing looks complicated enough to justify such long waits. What makes the loading even more baffling is that it occurs not only between levels but also during simple menu transitions, such as moving from the main menu to the garage. This suggests either a severe lack of optimization or an intentional attempt to pad out the experience. Both explanations seem plausible. The game takes more than ten gigabytes of storage while looking like a mobile title, and each loading screen displays information about in game car brands, written in unusually long paragraphs that conveniently match the duration of the loading time. Overall, the game presents a shallow and repetitive experience that struggles to justify its size, structure, and lack of refinement.

Fun and challenging drag racing game with a big assortment of vehicles to choose from. The physics can throw you off and even screw you over at times (especially on the carry missions), but once you figure out the quirks and get used to it then there's lots more to appreciate. The voice acting, soundtrack and vehicle models are brilliant for a game developed by a small dedicated team like this, and the story features plenty of funny distinct characters. There's plenty of replayability and side missions to do, though hopefully more achievements will be added soon to encourage more of that. The game can be slightly grindy in later areas (a cute little guide owl tells you to take a break if you're getting tired) but managing your cash in this game isn't that difficult so it shouldn't be too big of a bother. Give it a shot, I miss Joe.

Despite its simple looks, I found this game extremely engaging and fun to play. Many of the missions offer a solid challenge and the gameplay loop is enjoyable and very reminiscent of old flash games albeit with more depth and gameplay variety. The cars have solid customization and the actual variety in the playable list in very solid. Overall this is an extremely good game for the price and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

It runs well and it plays well. I'm really enjoying it so far :) Strong recommend for the price.

At its core, Tear It Up is very strongly reminiscent of old flash games you used to play on the school computers when you had nothing better to do. While not my favorite kind of racing game, I got some enjoyment out of it. Graphically, it's not got much to offer outside a few pretty stylistic backdrops across the career, and the cars aren't modeled to superb quality, but in today's market I'd rather focus more on gameplay than graphics. It looks good enough to not be repulsive, but frankly not much better than decade old mobile games. For lack of a better word, forgettable. The gameplay itself is a bit of a repetitive loop, not that it can't be fun but when you have to stop to grind out a few races for a small handful of cash, the variety of quick events is super lackluster and once memorized becomes monotonous. The guns you unlock throughout the career help break up this issue, though outside of it they cannot be used at all. This makes quick event the weakest part of the game, when it should be stronger since once you beat the story, it feels like there's nothing else to do shy of replaying missions even though there is. The simple and easy to learn physics are fun, and once you upgrade your cars to be near invulnerable it becomes way more fun to goof off and do crazy stunts without having to worry about landing wrong. The career itself is varied in events and is definitely the most fun part of the game, with a story as goofy and unserious as everything else. Delivery felt very tedious and annoying at first, but once I started seeing what risky stunts I could get away with I stopped dreading it. The number of cars is lower but varied, and customization is weak compared to other games, but the only complaints I have with it are lack of colors and liveries. Out of everything I think besides not enough track variety, the lack of feedback makes the game feel a bit weak. Cars don't properly rev, they don't spin tires and you don't have to shift gears so the entire race is just holding the accelerator and adjusting to the scenery as it comes. Another major complaint I have is the loading screens. Not only do they take forever, but the mid-boss battle loading times really pull you out of the moment and ruin a lot of intensity they could have. If guns had any use outside of missions I think I would spend more time with it, but otherwise 5-6 unique quick events with the same exact opponents per tier is a major drag, and I don't want to just replay career missions every time I want to play the game. The sound design is good enough but it's massively held back by one thing and that's the engine sounds. Their constant changing is very choppy and annoying if not being drowned out by music, and while they definitely add to its flash game style I found it ear grating. The music is okay, but much like the game itself isn't so much my thing. Would I recommend it? Sure. It's simple, enjoyable, but a bit undercooked. Updates are a must. 6.8/10 Impressive for a game I probably wouldn't have taken interest in on my own, but could be way better.