Victory Heat Rally

Anime Arcade Racing ------------------- ⭐⭐⭐⭐ ------------------- I like the: · Style · Drifting · Racetracks

If you like F-Zero you’ll probably like this game. There’s a little bit of SNES F-Zero and SNES Mario Kart in this game. One of the better 2D art in a 3D world games out there. The first few stages are pretty chill but at some point the difficulty ramps up super fast.

The game is all style and no substance. As much as I wanted to like it, I just got bored and its why I don't recommend it. There are wild performance spikes in nearly every race where one or two laps suddenly start going 2-3 times as fast as the rest of the laps. I think this might be to compensate for the rubberbanding going on with the ai opponents, where the bottom tier are basically just low level obstacles you'll never need to worry about until you lap them again, the top 3 are medium/hard depending on the heat, and the rival is fully cheated at different stages of the tournament where they're a snail on one and the next they're a rocket. Its not difficult, just annoying. They're basically all the same racer with slightly different settings dialed in. The controls and mechanics are simplistic to the point where the maps and visuals can't make up for every race being basically the same. There is no point to the different bars when you're deciding on which car to use, as long as its above zero it doesn't really matter. The game doesn't get any better the longer you play, there aren't any skills to practice, there really isn't anything to it.

--Mixed Review-- This is a nice retro themed concept that really nails the visual, environmental, and sound design, as well as having a good sense of speed, and these are the strongest selling points. However, the rest of the game is let down by missing so many basic features it’s a bit baffling. [h3]Lack of Info:[/h3] For starters, the biggest frustration is just how little info the game gives you w/ your race results: 1. You only know what place/medal you got by the color of the Goal! text. 2. You never know how close behind 2nd was when you finish, or the finish times of any other ai for that matter. Additionally, if you’re doing a rally (time-trial) or another side event that is scored, it won’t even tell you how close or far you were to the gold medal. 3. In the world map, you don’t know how many stars you have for the event until you drive your car over to it. All of these decisions are genuinely baffling and I cannot comprehend how a game released in 2024 refuses to communicate this basic information to you. [h3] Handling and Ai: [/h3] Regarding Handling and AI, I think its decent, it’s similar to drift boosting in Mariokart but w/ some changes. Chiefly, you don’t actually get your driftboost until your car is straightened out, this means that on some “S” sections you can very briefly let go of the drift to change directions and continue charging, however, you don’t get your driftboost until your car straightens out, even if you’re not holding the drift. This makes tight “S” sections feel pretty good but other shallower or drawn-out sections feel pretty bad. As for the ai, they are braindead for the first ¾’s of the career and don’t really get close enough until the final cup and aren’t a challenge until Rallymania (the very final piece of the career) and I really feel like the ai should’ve had better difficulty scaling. Not to mention that even once the ai becomes competent the main challenge of the game either comes from being on a bad car or avoiding the walls. Tapping a wall, even for less than half a second is incredibly punishing as it erases your entire boost gauge as well as a good chunk of speed which also ruins your entry into the next several corners. It’s so bad that even falling off the track is less punishing. On a side note, the camera can get really disorienting on some corners on certain tracks. [h3] Announcer and Rivals: [/h3] Lastly, I think more should’ve been done w/ the announcer and rivals. For starters, the announcer only has 2 sprites and only exists to give a chatgpt summary of the cup, and the rivals are practically non-existent and only have 1 or 2 lines at their introduction and when you take their car. And throughout the cup it points out to you which car is the rival’s but in a grand prix (finale of the cup) when it shows the results screen for the gp standings it only lists them as Rival in a field of Player1,2,3 etc. It just feels like the bare minimum. [h3] Overall: [/h3] I think the aesthetic is great and the core racing combined w/ the sense of speed can be fun but everything else around it just does not hold up. If you’re not fully sold on what you see on the store page then you’re probably better off taking your money elsewhere.

Easy to master casual racer. 4-5 hours to win all championships. Quality soundtrack(Eurobeat homage at Mount Agadashi was the best) and nicely drawn retro pixel graphics. Alas, my only complaint regarding the visuals is the inconsistent vehicle sprites, on the selection screen the cars look totally different from each other but when you start the race the they are suddenly all same with tiny minor differences, why cheapen your effort on something thats on the center of the screen 95% of gameplay after making sprites for all those fancy distinctive stages? Such a questionable decision. But though it's a bit too simple, the core racing experience is solid and it never felt unfair. The optional challenge levels provide some healthy variations to the gameplay, it managed to stay refreshing long enough to not give me bore for the entire duration of the championship mode. Difficulty, not every game is meant to be extra challenging, but I can't help but feel it's a bit too trivial. I kept expecting the difficulty curve to corner me against the wall but it never came. It's common for racing games to gradually size up difficulty by giving you faster cars as the game progresses, however Victory Heat Rally isn't one of them, the sense of speed you'll have at the first race is the same one you'll have at the end. Also the AI of this game is I suspect at least partly faulty and not working as intended, I commonly saw those supposed high skilled bosses finishing 6th or worse at rallies. One of them even finished 11th(!) in one stage. Unless you keep riding walls(you likely won't because the drift mechanic is super easy to get ahold of), you'll finish most races 1st in one attempt. I personally only retried 3 races during the entire playthrough and it was only when set my difficulty to Superhard in arcade then they began to pose a challenge. In general, very decent. Recommendable if can be bought for around 10 bucks or less.

I have more time than what is shown its prob closer to 700+ hrs. But for the most part it was a fun game, addicting for getting fast times and competing against others in Speedrun.com. But there's really no updates, only a few people play at times, and there are some known bugs that aren't fixed and some other things outside the game. But at this point is not really worth it.