EDIT: The developer said a big update was coming in March, but it was never released (Still nothing as of October 10). Consider this game abandonded until they actually do something about the horrendous state they left this game in.
Xtreme Aces Racing is a low quality, bad game. Just in the main menu alone I could already tell this wasn't going to go well. I thought at first my controller wasn't supported, but then I realized that to navigate the menus, I needed to use the left analog stick. You can't use the D-PAD to go through the menus. Great start already. Then I found out that when I went into the options, I did see I could change my controller button bindings, however they were all listed as 'JOYSTICK1BUTTON'. This is 2022, and how is there still games that can't list 'A, B, X, Y' but list them as 'JOYSTICK1BUTTON1, JOYSTICK1BUTTON2', etc. HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW WHAT THE ♥♥♥♥ JOYSTICK1BUTTON1 IS ON MY CONTROLLER?!?!?!
All the narration ingame is text to speech AI. At that point you might as well have no people talking because it feels extremely cheap, and super distracting.
The graphics suck. They somehow managed to get that garbage Unreal Engine 4 looks in Unity. The textures are very low quality, and the lighting is just so basic.
Sound design is also super basic. You hardly hear the engine sounds from the jet, and the weapon sounds laughably weak. The music is also just generic heavy rock songs that feel very out of place.
The environments also are a joke. You are in valleys with rocks copied and pasted on either side. There are no sweeping vistas, or big changes to these tracks. You can literally see outside of the track if you fly high enough. At least the jets themselves look fine...
The controls feel very weird. I am definitely not accustomed to flying games, but it doesn't feel like I'm controlling a jet. The movements are very jerky, and the camera has a hard time following the ship when going up and down. It's hard to describe what is off, but for anyone who has played other flight games in the past, you'll definitely not like these controls.
The vehicular combat sucks. Firstly, there is [b]no collisions[/b] when hitting other jets. Yea, you literally phase right through them, meaning you can not damage them, or push them into the environment. Secondly, there is hardly any depth to the weaponized combat either. You just randomly pick up some weapons like rockets or machine guns, shoot a jet, the jet explodes, and they respawn back. Jets still fly fine even after being slightly damaged, I can't mess up other jets by exploding rockets near them, etc. Its the same cycle, boring combat style over and over again. Also, defensive powerups like the mines, shield, and repair are stacked with the offensive weapons, meaning you are forced to use them in order to pick up more weapons. Like it amazes me how inept this decision was.
The AI also rubberband at insane rates even on medium because they can constantly get boost, while you get like absolutely no boost whatsoever. In my time playing I never once got any boost pickups. NOT ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ONCE. This is frustrating on its own, but it also caused a problem that at the beginning they constantly take all the powerups leaving you with nothing to take them down. Because of these issues, the racing is not fun or rewarding.
When you crash, you don't crash out in some spectacular way. Your jet just explodes, and just disappears. Even though you have a health bar, everything you hit just kills you instantly. If you even slightly clip the scenery, you die.
This should have released as an early access title at half the price it is at currently. I can not tell you how much this game pissed me off with its absolute inept design choices. Seriously, do not buy this game. Buy Skydrift instead that does aerial combat so much better.
[i]For more reviews like this, check out the [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/38286468/]Vehicular Combat Central[/url] Steam curator.[/i]
