I don't know if the developer reads the reviews or even still updates the game, but i pray both happen so maybe some change for the better may occur.
I am giving this game a thumbs up because this game is incredible in some areas, and in the areas it isn't already great there is massive promise showing through. I've heard this is a one-man dev team and that seems to show through, and for that alone the game deserves a little recognition in the wider public eye.
however every game has its problems, and unfortunately this game is not only no different, it has them in spades.
a very common complaint across every review is that the controls suck. personally i believe this is skill issue, as the controls are responsive and work perfectly, they just take getting used to. however an ACTUAL problem isn't your player character, its the computer players. the biggest problem i have seen in this game so far is the INSANE difficulty differences of some of the computer players. some races will have computers so inept and slow that even the second place contender will be easily lapped with a little skill, however on the other side of this, there are races where the computer players have such insane and wild rubberbanding and speed that you will be staying in the lead by only the skin of your teeth if at all. Another massive problem the game has with computers is how death is balanced. if the player character dies, its gameover and you restart the race. this isnt entirely unfair and it shouldnt be changed, however the computer players in those same races not only respawn, they respawn so fast and will catch up so fast that killing them is functionally useless as a mechanic. this is compounded with the fact that the weapons you use take MASSIVE amounts of energy to fire, and suddenly you are sitting in first place with no boost, no health, and about 2 seconds before 2nd place passes you and makes you fail the level anyways. even worse than this is the requirement you use the weapons, as to my knowledge it is completely impossible to actually beat the more difficult races without using them or attempting to slow down the opponents. this creates an incredibly unfun and unfair loop where you start the race, you shoot the enemy (wasting your energy which doubles as health f-zero style), they die, and then come back and overtake you forcing you to repeat the process ad nausem. the problem with this process is that you as the player will ALWAYS lose this interaction by its end. there is no winning through this method and it makes races an incredibly tedious, (in a quite ironic twist) almost sisyphean repeating of trial and error to pray you skip something or get lucky enough to pass the finish line first.
to top this off, the bosses unfortunately suffer the EXACT same fate, they will either be pathetically easy and almost a joke, or they will be cryptic and infuriating to attempt to figure out and properly execute.
to reiterate, despite the negativity in this review i am desperately praying for the game's success. The person who did the work to get it this far deserves recognition for their work, and i hope more eyes on it may inspire the dev to give the project more work in the future.
