Nitro City Racing

You’ve probably heard the jokes about how NASCAR is for people who are afraid of turning right. If that’s the case, then the new game Nitro City Racing is for people who don’t want to turn at all. Set on the straightest highway you’ll ever see, this is a game about weaving through traffic and avoiding the other cars. Sound exciting? Well, it’s not. Here is my review for Nitro City Racing from EastAsiaSoft.

Despite what the title suggests, Nitro City Racing isn’t really a game about racing. With nobody competing against you and no way of coming in first (or last, for that matter), this is really more about close-calls. It’s a game where you drive expensive cars on the world’s straightest four-lane highway, all while dodging traffic and racking up combos with every near-miss.

If it sounds like I’m being flippant, I assure you that I’m not. This is, more or less, all you do in Nitro City Racing. This is a game where you avoid other cars for as long as possible, all while racking up points and going for a high score. Sometimes everybody will all be driving in the same direction, while other times there will be a couple of lanes with on-coming traffic. If you flash your lights when nearing other cars, they’ll do their best to move over and give us room.

The roads will usually start out sparsely populated, however, the longer you drive, the more cars get added to the straight-stretch. You’ll weave in and out of traffic, cutting off buses and speeding past SUVs with reckless abandon. Outside of your reflexes, the only ability you have is temporary slow motion, something that will help you masterfully cut through the clutter with expert precision.

You do this in order to earn money, which you will use to unlock new cars and upgrade their specs. Although there aren’t a lot of vehicles, they do a good job of giving you a nice variety. There an old sports car, a classic muscle car, an ultra-expensive race car, an SUV and even the cab of a semi-truck. You’ll be able to upgrade each of these vehicle’s speed, braking and more, including giving us a turbo button that is basically useless.

The game does attempt to add some value with the campaign mode, which offers 54 increasingly difficult challenge stages. One level will want you to combo twenty cars in a row, while another will want you to drive 5 miles without crashing. There’s nothing especially new or original here, as almost everything revolves around near-misses and driving fast. About the most unique challenge here is the one where you have to drive into oncoming traffic for a set amount of time. These few challenges keep getting repeated, with the set amount of time, combos, speed and everything else getting increased with each rotation.

What this mode does is highlight how shallow this game actually is. It’s a reminder that the developers could only think up a few ideas before needing to recycle them over and over again. There are entire gameplay mechanics that could have been incorporated into this mode to shake up the monotony, like having a challenge that forces you to use your blinking lights to redirect traffic. Or what about a challenge that forces players to exhaust (and recharge) their turbo meter?

And if we’re going to start pulling on the what-could’ve-been thread, there are so many design choices that ultimately limit the game. For example, why aren’t any of these stages set at night or at dusk? That alone would have added a new challenge to the game. Or maybe it’s raining or icy in another part of Nitro City. And not to be too obvious, but maybe we go into a part of the city that is only two lanes or six lanes. I recently played through Incremental Retro Racing, and that did a much better job of shaking up the highway, which in turn made each race feel more exciting.

Even if you want to say that this, like an old arcade game, is little more than a game about earning high scores, Nitro City Racing still comes up short. Sure, you can see your high score, but where are the leaderboards? How does my ten-thousand points compare to the rest of the world or even my friends? These may seem like little things, but they quickly add up.

Visually, Nitro City Racing looks sharp. The graphics are clean and the sense of speed is pretty good, especially with the faster cars. There are a few backgrounds, though you’ll probably find the setting to be about as repetitive as the gameplay. I appreciate that the developer went to the trouble of creating an interior view for every car, something that is a nice touch. The first-person mode can really limit the view, but I found that it made almost every race more exciting.

Nitro City Racing is the type of game you’ll play for a few minutes and never think about again. Once you’ve earned a high score and discovered how monotonous the challenge mode is, you’ll quickly lose interest. As it turns out, racing games are better with corners. Who would have guessed?