XF Extreme Formula

I recommend this with a VERY HEAVY asterisk, because to be very blunt this game feels more like an Alpha than what should be a full release with the level of polish/quality that is missing in so many parts of the game. Story inconsistencies (like when it starts suddenly listing races), unclear directions or goals in said story, arcade unlock conditions just straight up not working (like the ones to unlock The Survivor, Shoe, or Vespa, for instance) and minor issues with tracks suddenly giving a DQ when not off the track (pretty bad one on Kasei Circuit and one of the Prooving Grounds tracks). Typos during the finale of the story really kill the mood you're going for. HOWEVER This game has a solid foundation and I did enjoy learning these tracks! These speeds are refreshing coming from Redout 2, and the overboosting mechanic is one of my favorite aspects to reward clean play. The environments are also surprisingly varied and I thoroughly enjoyed my time during the race parts of the game's story to 1st place nearly every race. That said, I think the game has a horrible way to try and teach you - the onboarding for this game is not kind in the slightest and if you didn't come in expecting that level of difficulty in an AG racer then I can understand the other reviews which mention it. I enjoy that the tutorials do require you to actually know what you're doing, but getting used to how overreactive the ship is was not a very fun time. I also wish that the actual tournament in the story mattered more than it ends up doing. Also, I find the 3d platformer/fighting thing to be very goofy and I never felt like I was really having fun with that. It's not too disconnected from the story that it feels completely tacked on, but I can't say it's a highlight. So summary: The racing in this game is great, the music is fantastic, track designs are great, learning experience is a bit shakey, story has ups and downs, but the game feels like it was built brick by brick overtime with parts built earlier never being updated to match the scope of the game and so it all feels extremely unpolished or slapped together at points. For $11, I think it's a great value, but man I cannot overlook this lapse in quality for what is a 1.0 release meant for the public.

I’m not an F-Zero fan but I was compelled to try this game because I’ve been following LakeFeperd's work since 2015, back in the days of his trilogy of Sonic fangames. That said I am a fan of racing games in general, and in that regard XF more than delivers. It's also his most ambitious work by far and it...shows, both in good and bad ways. The star of the show is ultimately the Arcade mode, and for that by itself I think the game is more than worth the current price tag. It’s what you would expect: you pick one of several cups (each of which is based on a planet in the Solar System, with a few exceptions), pick a character, and you race. In Arcade mode there’s 10 characters with unique vehicles, ranging from Shell and his all-rounder White Kestrel to Wolfman with his handling and acceleration-focused Crosswinds, to The Survivor and his tanky, boost-focused Never Centauri. Most characters are locked by default however, so you’ll need to complete the cups at increasingly high difficulties to access them all. Plus there are also an additional 4 secret cars normally reserved for the filler NPC racers you can unlock, though personally I’m not even remotely skilled enough to beat the cups at Beyond difficulty lol. The core gameplay feels great; it’s all about chaining together your boosts, hitting every boost pad and blitzing through the tracks as fast as possible, yet at the same time the mechanics are a lot more technical than at first glance. Once you get to the later courses, you need to learn how to finesse your way through the tracks, learning how to strafe and sometimes even brake and corner to navigate turns without crashing into everything. (Personally, I’m still quite bad at not crashing into everything though.) There’s a ton of tracks totaling up to almost 60 overall; sometimes it admittedly starts to feel like quantity over quality, especially with the more gimmicky and simplistic layouts like Ringatron or Mobinaria, which both mostly feel like driving in a straight line while you hit every boost pad you can. Some tracks also play with other concepts like ‘zero atmosphere’ zones where your boost is disabled and you can accelerate infinitely…which sounds cool but ends up being annoying because even the slightest mistake gets severely punished with little way for you to recover. It also breaks the balancing of the game by making acceleration the only stat that matters (in other words Wolfman dominates here). Thankfully there’s only like 3 tracks that heavily rely on this mechanic, with smaller implementations in others. Outside of Arcade you also have the Story mode, which is…rather unusual for a racing game. This was an aspect of the game I was very intrigued by before release but the final implementation was…very undercooked. In the story mode you can only play as Shell, who is essentially the game’s protagonist, and as a trade-off the White Kestrel is now customizable. I’m not going to try to describe the whole story so to put it simply: it takes place on the Nomad, a city-sized space station that travels through the solar system, and it’s about Shell facing off against Cingul, a mysterious, malevolent racer with supernatural powers. The player needs to build up Shell’s strength to defeat him and uncover his true nature. Along the way, the other XF racers get roped into Cingul’s schemes and some…interesting things happen, to say the least. Frankly, the plot felt like an unstructured mess that had very little to do with the actual racing…basically the opposite problem most racing stories have. Mechanically the story follows a calendar system – the narrative plays out on a day-by-day basis from December to October of the next year. Every activity consumes 1 day and you have a few options normally. Most importantly you can visit the Proving Grounds, an explorable hub where you can partake in Night Races, which earn you cash and sponsorships that increase your income (and allow you to upgrade you Kestrel), and the Proving Grounds Challenges, which are just a series of tutorial missions. You can also access the challenges in Arcade mode so there’s no point in playing them here; IMO, it would have made sense for them to work like license tests in Gran Turismo where they gate the players access to higher-level Night Races. On some days you can even talk to other racers in the Proving Grounds who give you extra events to play in…unfortunately this aspect mostly disappears by like April in the story. The other major activity are No-Go Zones, areas of the Nomad that are infested with criminal scum. When you go here the gameplay shifts entirely away from racing to a beat-em-up platformer, and it's…surprisingly fun? It basically feels like the gameplay of Spark the Electric Jester, but slowed down to a walking pace. You want to rack up as many points as you can by defeating enemies and grabbing collectibles, and in reward you get XP to upgrade Shell’s stats. This mainly matters because at several points in the story, you are forced into unique No-Go Zones and boss battles that use the beat-em-up gameplay. So for that, you want to be prepared. Aside from those main points, your other activities are a ‘daily activity’ which essentially skips a day and gives you a random reward, a part-time job which also skips the day and gives you money, and simply going home which skips the day entirely. Some days of the month are also ‘burn days’, periods during which the Nomad travels to another planet in the solar system and no activities can be done. Generally this precedes the actual main cups from Arcade Mode, which are also a part of the story’s…tangential relation to the XF tournament itself. So all this sounds pretty cool, right? Unfortunately, it just gets super repetitive. There’s simply not enough stuff to do to fill out the game’s length with only 6-ish unique Night Race courses and 8 No-Go Zones. I already cleared and played all of both events by like…May, at which point I was just repeating the same events to earn more money and XP. By the endgame I was skipping most days entirely, and the story itself increasingly skips large numbers of days for narrative reasons as well. Not only that but the cool details that made the world feel alive, particularly being able to interact with your fellow racers organically in the Proving Grounds, increasingly fall by the wayside as you progress the game. Ultimately this sprawling RPG-esque mode was way too much for one person to handle, considering it’s known that Lake cut vast swathes of content from the story mode to be able to release it last month. I loved the vision of it, but the actual execution of was…rather disappointing. I’m not even getting into the plot and writing itself, this review is long enough already and that would probably double its length. So overall I think XF is a great game, but like I was getting at in the start the game’s ambition was simply way too much to be executed well. It left me disappointed because due to this game’s poor sales, we will likely never see a sequel that improves on its issues either. Still for 12 dollars it’s worth it just to play Arcade mode and listen to the game’s banging soundtrack while you race. So, I would definitely recommend this game regardless of its issues. And if nothing else, the story mode gives you a taste of a fascinating vision I really want to see iterated on in a future game someday.

As of writing this review, I have only played story mode. I have not yet tried arcade. Honestly there's a lot to love here. The music, art and story are all phenomenal. Your vehicle controls are also very tight, but I can't help but feel like sometimes they're a little too tight to point of almost being jerky. It's not a problem on its own so long as the tracks accommodate for it, which to be entirely fair many of them do. But there are a solid handful that don't feel designed for the kind of game that XF is. I wanted to quit during the Jupiter Cup when I'm trying to navigate a tight corridor with tons of twists and turns and grazing the side of the track flung me up the mountain into the sky costing me the race. This happened multiple times. It's especially frustrating because when you are flung out of bounds you're not put back in missing some health, you're just automatically disqualified and the race has to start all the way over. To add insult to injury, you can't even skip the "Disqualified" scene until the entire jingle for it finishes playing. So it takes every so slightly longer to get back into a race that's just going to bug out and make me do it all over again. I was frontrunning the entire race and then lost because of messed up collision. The racing is jank, which is unfortunate because it looks to be the main selling point of the game. Also I have to talk about the Beat 'Em Up sections. They're not terrible, but they feel like a slower and clunkier version of Spark the Electric Jester 3's combat. Every time the game forced one of these segments it made me wish I was playing Spark 3 instead. I don't think I would've minded them as much if combat was vastly different, but as it is right now it feels like filler. Lake has said in dev interviews that he doesn't intend to keep working on XF, but if there is a future update that introduces bugfixes I'll change my review.

Good game but what would make it great would be if they added a cockpit view, also it hasn't got any controller rumble either, would be almost perfect game if they added these two things.

Je vais vite!!!!!!!!!!

Really good, just wish it had 4 player split screen instead of just 2.

the fastest racing game since garfield kart 2

Game is a messy glitch-fest and an absolute graphical nightmare. Not even an hour into the game and it's entirely unplayable. Screen keeps going black randomly, ship keeps glitching left and right randomly and slams me into walls making racing impossible to control. Controls don't work, or refuse to sync properly generating a delay. I waited eagerly for this game and was sorely disappointed in it.

This will mainly be a review of the story mode. [h2] Gameplay [/h2] XF's racing gameplay is fantastic. The vast majority of the tracks have fantastic and interesting design, and there is (mostly) a smooth difficulty curve throughout the tracks, the on foot combat is inspiring to see in the genre as well. The zero G tracks are an interesting shake up to the gameplay, requiring perfection to maintain blistering speeds (which leads to Twelve Minutes being hellish in the story mode, more details below), and the Sprint tracks that conclude most cups are fantastic caps to each segment of gameplay. I feel the Outer Cup could have done with ending with a Sprint in the story, to make the final race more climactic. Outside of the racing, however, there is a shortage of content. I had completed every on foot stage and unlocked all powers by March (the story ends on October 3rd), and was left with an extreme surplus of resets that I only needed for Red Hell and the Outer Cup, the two major difficulty spikes in the story. It took me until the very end of the game to max my Night Race rank and unlock every sponsor, but I imagine those better at racing games than I am would have an easier time doing so. Red Hell is the only track I actively did not enjoy. It is very hard to keep on a path that cannot be memorised or learned efficiently due to being a Sprint, and the AIs seemingly perfectly race along it. It is also surrounded by some of the easiest tracks in the game, which does not help its standing. [h2] Plot (Major Spoilers) [/h2] The plot does have a few issues. The plot revolves around Cingul and Shell and their both seemingly possessing reality warping powers, yet the exact extent of these powers can be confusing. [spoiler]Cingular reveals that they are imperfections written directly into the fabric of the universe and as such have reality bending time travel powers and whatnot,[/spoiler] but the extent of Cingul's powers in particular is somewhat poorly set out. He [spoiler]can interface with the multiverse and send things to other universes (Shell was born from a fragment of Cingul he sent to our universe merging with a human), commit mass mind control,[/spoiler] knows where anyone is at all times, teleport people, stand in mid air, [spoiler]make the sun go supernova at will, and speed up light,[/spoiler] to name a few, but the rules that bind him are poorly explained simply because of the variety of what his "powers" are capable of. Shell's powers are similarly nebulous in their scope. He too can rewind time, but his powers also let him... block spam calls? Shell can use black fire based attacks, [spoiler]as can Cingul, that have antimemetic qualities. This is never expanded on in the story save for one scene establishing said antimemetic qualities.[/spoiler]. The story simply feels prevailingly half baked and shallow when it comes to the finer details. On a more positive note, the underlying themes of the story (mainly, secrets and the turmoil that they can bring) are interesting and somewhat well explored with several character examples. Two examples of this [spoiler] are Shoe's homosexuality and Vespa's actions during the Venus cup. Shoe keeps his sexuality a secret for his own safety, but Cingul's death game pressures him to come out to his family, which leads to him being murdered by his brother. Vespa, upon learning of the death game, disappeared and kept her whereabouts a secret, leading Shell and Digi to have to find her and force her to race for the sake of everyone in the game. Both demonstrate two sides to secrets - Shoe kept his secret to protect himself for good reason, but Vespa keeping her secret actively endangers everyone and it must be exposed. Shell even experiences this himself, with the group sans Digi being suspicious of him following Wolfman's death, creating tension for the player. [/spoiler] The story's ending, however, is somewhat flawed. [spoiler]Cingul traps Shell in a series of "ghost days" after Cingular does the same thing, forcing him to complete the Outer Cup against Cingul and 24 shadow clones of himself who are exactly as capable. Needless to say, going from racing a diverse skill-varied cast to racing 25 copies of the best AI in the game causes a major difficulty spike. The story's only real difficulty spike proceeding this was Red Hell, an aptly named, hellishly difficult sprint track that the AIs just magically have no issue with, surrounded by some of the easiest tracks in the game. The Outer Cup, Twelve Minutes especially, will likely take you many, [i]many[/i] attempts. After this, Cingul teleports you into space and... makes the sun explode, speeding up light so you can watch in all its glory. While no doubt a poignant scene showing that there really was never hope against a being like Cingul, it comes out of nowhere that Cingul is capable of making the sun explode. This goes into a final boss where Shell tries to merge with Cingul to recomplete him, in turn erasing his megalomania. The final boss is good, serving as a great mirror rival fight, but Freom from Spark 2 remains LakeFeperd's best final boss. However, after absorbing Cingul, Shell attempts to rewind time... ten months? It is said that Resets only allow for Shell to go a few minutes back, and he is presumably using the same power, so how can he suddenly rewind ten months? This ends with the human giving Shell form attempting to stop Shell from rewinding, or at least let the main cast keep their memories, claiming that Shell, by his nature, will live forever and keeping his connections from the characters a secret will only lead to Shell becoming like Cingul. Shell relents, but this carries a bevy of questions. Mainly: [i]several characters died.[/i] If they keep their memories, do they now just... possess knowledge of what happens after death? There is also a major typo problem throughout the game. I respect that English may not be LakeFeperd's strongest language, but there are several typos that probably should have been caught before a 1.0 release, including "through" being spelt as "trough" [i]in the final cutscene between the human and Shell[/i], ruining the emotional moment.[/spoiler] Overall, the story isn't bad, per se, and provides a lot of good food for thought, but is deeply flawed. [h2] Music [/h2] To end this review on the positive note it deserves, no pun intended, XF comes with a phenomenal soundtrack. The music perfectly evokes the feelings it has to, and continues the high standard of music in LakeFeperd's work. The Speed Of Light and Find Your 4nswer are the highlights, the former being a cutscene track where any glimmer of a chance you may have had diminishes to make way for chilling hopelessness, and the latter being a track for the races on the surface of Saturn and race 2 of the Outer Cup, which never fails to hype you up when you steal first place on the final lap, as an incredible orchestral-rock hybrid that has lyrics come in at the final lap. [h2] Conclusion [/h2] To cap off one of the longest reviews I've ever written. XF is an incredible, yet flawed, showing for a decade-plus passion project for the developer. As is customary with LakeFeperd's work, gameplay takes centre stage, with the backdrop of a great soundtrack and a servicable story to hold it all together. Overall, 7/10, FEAR NO ONE!

I just wanted to race. So much stupid interface and pointless nonsense trying to pad out limited content.