izigame.me

--Mixed Review--
PGRC has a great atmosphere and vibe that unfortunately does more than its fair share of heavy lifting to support a game that can’t bear the weight of its janky and erratic handling system past the first hour.
Atmosphere/Vibes
The game produces an inviting, pick up and play, arcade atmosphere through its graphics, menus, and music. It also has a retro, low poly art style that looks great and doesn’t sacrifice any visual clarity to achieve it. Each location also has a somewhat distinct feel and are memorable.
The music also does a great job building upon the atmosphere due to a somewhat unique choice in Ska. It’s able to keep the energy up and also contributes to some great moments at the height of some of the lyrics that happen to match some sections of track that make it really memorable. The game owes a lot of its identity to it and would lose a lot of soul without it.
Physics
In general, the gameplay starts off very similar to Mariokart. You have to drift around corners and you charge up a boost the longer you drift, and as you play in Light class and are still learning the game, it matches expectations well. Though as you move up to Heavy and Ultra class, you’ll eventually realize it plays very different from Mariokart. Cars have an incredibly slow natural top speed that you never want to be at, so you eventually discover drift chaining (Getting the boost while still in the pervious boost) in order to stack drift boosts to properly increase your speed.
The problem is that you can’t properly manage your speed unlike Mariokart, here your brakes do next to nothing and aren’t even that useful for adjusting lines, lifting is a double edged sword since if you get on the gas too early it’ll accelerate you very rapidly, and if you stop drifting for any reason (finger accidentally slipped, double tapped, released slightly to early, wrong direction, etc..) before you get a boost you lose all of your stacks and get reset back to your natural top speed, which I cannot overstate how unbearably slow it is, and is also the only way to lose your drift boost. Ironically this makes spamming your drift button more effective than your brakes or lifting to slow down.
As you are able to chain drifts more and more, you’ll see the physics become increasingly erratic. Naturally you want to stack your boost as quickly as possible so you’ll snake a bit or chain drifts multiple times throughout the same corner, but you also have to keep adding to it to make upcoming turns and eventually you’re going too fast and inevitably lose control. Also, as you’re going this fast you’ll start to realize that the track design and the physics aren’t capable of facilitating these speeds since you’ll commonly: overshoot jumps, hit ceilings, hit walls, landing becomes super inconsistent, you can start driving on walls, you can spin out or fly off the track when drifting up inclines (the only way to properly take inclines), if your back contacts a wall when drifting it’ll start climbing up the wall, if any wheel doesn’t have even contact with the ground you’ll spin, and any slight contact with an object will send you flying across the map. It genuinely feels like all of these maps were designed for the Light class and the others were added as an afterthought. In fact, there is no small mistake at these speeds since you don’t even lose the drift boost for hitting an object (You can even drive head-on into a wall and not lose the boost) and the boost isn’t checking to see if you’re wheels are on the ground so the second they aren’t you fly across the map.
A Time Trial Game?
The game just feels so frustrating to play as any mistake leads to an instant restart and I genuinely don’t think I’ve ever played a more punishing racing game. Many people have compared this to Trackmania (TM) due to the time trial (TT) aspects but this game is far too inconsistent and random to achieve the level of consistency and satisfaction that TM and other TTs can. I probably restart just as much if not more than in TM but the difference is, in TM I quick restart because I took a line that was a couple of tenths slower. In PGRC, I’m not even trying to improve by those margins, I’m just praying for a clean run so I can actually have a representative time and when I finally set one, I could’ve improved by so much more in TM with the time it took.
I’m well aware that there are people much faster than me on the leaderboards as the top 50 usually have times ranging from 10-30s faster than mine, but it’s not like I’m that slow. I can at a minimum get top 20% on every track and I know the feeling of being over 20s ahead of the gold time but it feels like you’re fighting the game at every turn, jump, and impact just to be playing at this level rather than one that facilitates it.
Overall
As much as I love the atmosphere, vibes, and concept, I’ve never played a game that’s felt so janky and so frustrating to play at a decent level. The game is decently cheap but I think $10 is a bit too much for the level of jankiness and only 3hrs of content, not to mention you’ll only have 1-2hrs before the cracks start getting large. And for $10 you can pick up something like Old School Rally or an older TM.