Although the Switch is home to a plethora of arcade-style racing games, the same can’t be said for more realistic fare.
This is most likely because the Switch hardware would struggle to handle the Gran Turismos and Forza Motorsports of this world, so developers tend to miss out on Nintendo’s system when making their own serious racers. Besides, let’s face it, on the odd occasion that the Switch has received a port of a racing sim, the results usually leave something to be desired – case in point, the noisy visuals that have featured in WRC games for years.
French indie developer Zero Games Studio is trying to embrace the middle ground with Hot Lap Racing, a game it’s calling a ‘simcade racer’ – that is, a game that has the serious elements of simulation, but boasts more forgiving action and at a fast pace. of an arcade-style runner. The results really fall somewhere in the middle, for better or for worse.
Being an indie studio, Zero Games doesn’t exactly have untold riches to bring to Ferrari and friends, so it would be unrealistic to expect Hot Lap Racing to explode with thousands of mega-brand manufacturers. What it offers instead is a more eclectic mix of genuine cars and lookalikes that should raise petrol eyebrows.
Given the developer’s French location, it’s perhaps no surprise that Renault, Citroen and Peugeot are included in the game’s list of 50+ cars, but there are also some interesting manufacturers here that don’t regularly appear in racing games. such as Alpine, Venturi, Noble, Minardi and Lola.
That’s partly because the game’s main gimmick is the way it divides its car types – single-seater, GT, endurance and the like – into modern and historic categories, allowing Zero Games to showcase some of the coolest models from The past. and simply whatever modern vehicles he can get his hands on.
This commitment to the unconventional side of racing extends to the drivers you face, some of whom are based on real-life racers from a variety of disciplines (others appear to be fake). There are more than 100 of them, and they serve as your opponents in the game’s main career mode – if you win a championship they’re competing in, they’ll be added to your Driver Code, complete with a little bio.
As well as the typical Time Trial, Championship and Quick Race modes you’d expect from a typical racing game, Hot Lap Racing’s main offering is the career mode, where you take on a series of themed championships covering different disciplines and time periods. As you score these – and complete them well enough to earn high rankings – you unlock parts for a fictional Formula X-Treme car. It’s a solid way of doing things and provides some variety, even if the 17 tracks on offer (and their various course variants) become overly familiar by the end.
There are also local multiplayer games for one to four racers – either single races or full championships – and online races. Local split screen works pretty well given the game’s limitations, which we’ll get to, while we couldn’t find an online race during the pre-release period, and dare we say it’s going to be tricky to find one pas- nis also.
As always, where it all counts is the road itself, and it’s here that Hot Lap Racing will divide opinion. Performance was never going to be 1080p at 60fps for a game like this on the Switch, so the fact that the game aims for 30fps and achieves that for the most part is quite admirable, especially since the resolution never seems to drop to the extent that things start to look blurry – it remains nice and sharp, even in handheld mode.
That said, it doesn’t always hit that 30fps target, and the game has a habit of faltering at busier moments, including the start of nearly every race when multiple cars are on screen at once. This is inevitable and it’s just something you’ll have to deal with until the pack spreads out a bit and there are fewer cars in front of you.
Handling varies quite significantly depending on the type of car you have chosen. Single-seater open-wheelers (F1-style) have tight handling and are probably the most satisfying to control, but other types have very loose handling and make you slide all over the place, which it is not as pleasant as it seems. It’s here where the game’s ‘simcade’ philosophy bites it, because in trying to be a jack of all trades, it never really hits either side.
Gamers looking for a more realistic simulation experience will be disappointed by the lack of tuning options, slippery handling and the frankly awful music that plays throughout (this can thankfully be turned off, but exposes poor engine noises as a result). Meanwhile, those wanting more arcade-style racing will be annoyed by HLR’s insistence on dishing out penalties for going off the track, bumping into enemies and the like, meaning the game finds itself in a rough patch. weird medium where you can go gung-ho, but only to an extent.
We’d be lying if we said he hasn’t had a good time with Hot Lap Racing, despite its flaws. Its performance certainly leaves a lot to be desired (especially during early races) and it can never tell if it wants to be taken seriously, but we really like its eclectic car selection, career-long mode and focus its in not only modern cars but also old ones.
As long as you consider its issues before buying the game, there’s certainly enough to do here to justify the £30 asking price, and the fact that it at least tries to do something a little different with the car roster its something that benzinheads should probably. reward them anyway with their custom.
CONCLUSION
Hot Lap Racing is too serious to be an arcade racer, and its handling is too loose to be considered a serious simulation, but gamers looking for something that tries to straddle the middle ground will get a kick out of the list. its unique car and its dedication. in racing history, despite his performance issues.