Track Mayhem

Made by first-time developer Best Free Games Inc., you might expect that the new PlayStation 4 racing game Track Mayhem would be, well, free. It's not. Although it's free on iOS devices, the console port will set you back $5. That's not a lot, but I can't help but feel a little duped by that company name. This is one of those situations where I would probably be a lot more willing to overlook all of the shortcomings if it were free. But it's not, so this is the review you get.

At first glance, Track Mayhem looks a lot like a low-budget version of wipEout. You control a futuristic hovercraft speeding through round tunnels and avoiding obstacles. It's a racing game in the sense that you're controlling a car, but you're never competing against other drivers. You'll mostly just whip around the levels trying to avoid running into walls and picking up coins. It's basically a new (and less violent) take on that old game S.T.U.N. Runner.

There are ten challenging stages to race through, each with their own slightly different set of things to avoid. Many of these levels have you racing inside the hexagon, but there are also stages that will open things up and let you speed over the outside of the shape. This is where things get tricky, because the randomized levels tend to hide the obstacles in annoying and unfair locations. The good news is that you can shield yourself from hits, as well as jump over some of the smaller walls lining the track. More importantly, you can crash a few times before being forced to restart the stage.

What I quickly discovered is that I could only play this game in short doses. There's something about the repetition that got to me after a while, forcing me to take a break and recharge. But even with playing it in short bursts, Track Mayhem proved to be a short and ultimately unsatisfying experience. It does everything it's supposed to in order to be a competent runner and nothing more. It's lacks a personality and will be easily forgotten, but it doesn't do anything particularly wrong. It succeeds at what it's trying to be, which is a short and simple iOS game that can be given away for free. However, as a $5 release on PlayStation 4, I would think twice about jumping into Track Mayhem.