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Radial-G: Racing Evolved (PS4)

Status: Stopped playing - Got frustrated
I started playing this game on Wednesday 19 April, 2023  //  I stopped playing this game on: Thursday 27 April, 2023
Current opinion of this game
No comment, yet.

April 27, 2023 03:07:44 PM
As I "gear up" to start thinking about buying PSVR2 and I'm trying to make my way through my PSVR games. This one being a prime example. I've still got many more...

When I saw this in the store my impression was that this was a VR-version of Wipeout, but probably without the thumping soundtrack and, well..other Wipeout cool stuff. So, I wasn't expecting too much to be honest (WipeOut being a high point in terms of sci-fi racing games)...

The game's novel feature is that you're racing on the outside of a long tube (that twists and winds and forks and such). Thus the name. Weirdly it reminds me of a game some students made when I first taught game design/development all the way back in 2000. The 2000 student-made game was a racer, on a tube BUT you raced around the inside of the tube instead of the outside. Of course the game had fewer features, etc. But still, a very similar concept. That's not to diss the developers of this game - but rather to highlight what this team of students did over 20 years ago when 3D accelerator cards were barely a thing. I don't even remember how they demoed the game (brought in their own computers? laptops?). I mean, laptops were rare/expensive back then too...

ANYWAYS, the game has a overarching meta structure - you get points for participating in different kinds of events, so I played a bunch of them. Maybe for an hour or so..and then got really, really nauseated. So yeah, this was not the game for me unfortunately. As a racing game there wasn't much going on - there are pickup/weapons you can use but they're super rare to find and hard to use effectively. The tracks have lots of boost pads and also red blockers and the game makes use a lot of having these red blockers rotate around the pipe so you have to adjust course to make it through. That part of the racing was kind of fun, you feel like you're weaving between the blockers and such and you have time to sort of sync your approach.

The racing itself was less interesting - all the enemies start of way ahead and you basically have to hit all the boost pads? But then, some races I won easily while others not so much. It didn't feel quite balanced when racing the AI. Unfortunately for me, I wasn't able to play online either - I think it just waited for other players - so, I think servers are still up but no one is playing?


 
kudos for original design to Rodrigo Barria