Hotshot Racing (PS4, Switch, XBO, PC) - Sumo Digital

[dataDave]

With Daytona on the 360/PS3, OutRun2 and Sega Rally on the PS2, and Virtua Racing on the Switch I find it hard to disagree.

That said I do love a bit of Horizon Chase on the phone.

We're only really missing Scud Race and Daytona 2 (which were far from great, anyways).

[Neon Ignition]

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-08-27-hotshot-racing-gets-a-release-date

Releases 10 September

[hudson]

Cool. Review in a couple of days too. I hope it delivers.

[nonny]

Xbox Game Pass! Sweet.... I'd forgotten about this one

[JazzFunk]

Awesome news!!!!!!

[BearBoy]

Anyone tried this out yet?

[kryss]

Played the Switch version a little, found it quite light and fun with lots of customisation to unlock.

[Wools]

Yeah, I picked it up last night, but only played it in TT on a few tracks.

My first impression of it is not great. It looks fantastic but the control when you pick it up, is floaty, not connected and the drifting in the Aston didn't feel great to pull off.

I'll have to give it some more time but with most racers, Arcade or Sim, you get a nice sensation off the bat, feeling the car as you hook up corners or let the end kick out. Hotshot doesn't have that at all for me on first go which I must admit, gutted me as I picked it up during the day as a pick me up for a ****ty working week! When I fired it up after dinner, and just didn't connect with the controls, I was gutted! I fired up the M2 ports of Outrun and Virtua Racing and by comparision, Hot Shot came up so damn poor.

I'll be playing more of it this week but first impressions aren't good.

[MartyG]

First impressions I got once the car was on the track is that I was controlling a block of lard on the tarmac :/ - it's feels like the controller is almost disconnected from the vehicle, it defnitely feels very wierd to play. It's almost like Sumo went, well we did OutRun 2, so we can't make it play similarly to that otherwise people will accuse us of just reskinning that.

Honestly, I wish it played more like OutRun 2.

[paulus]

I'm OK at Arcade Racers but won gold on all 4 tracks the very first time I played them (Normal Level). Good but a bit too easy.

[Team Andromeda]

To me this is a pile of crap, can't believe Sumo are behind it

[hudson]

Really sad to hear. Time for Namco to take notice in the arcade racer genre interest right now and remaster their classic.

We can dream.

[cutmymilk]

Literally all they should be doing is taking the ferrari out of outrun 2. Or making friends with them.

[Leon Retro]

I had high hopes for this when I saw the attractive screenshots. But after watching someone play it on YT, I realised it's not my cup of tea. The way the vehicles move and connect with the road looks wrong, the constant voices are annoying, and the overall bland design really turned me off the game.

It may look fine technically, but the designers completely failed to make the vibe of the game cool and charming. Instead, it's all very generic and ends up feeling like a cheap and irritating Nickelodeon racing game.

I expected better from SUMO.

[MartyG]

I actually quite like how it looks, but there's a disconnect between the arcade look and the arcade feel. With OutRun 2 and Daytona, which is what I think off when I think arcade racer, things click straight away, what you input is what happens, it's precise and connected, it's immediately rewarding and enjoyable - this game isn't that.

I'm sure if you played it for long enough, the way it plays would start to make more sense, but I was struggling a bit to find any consistency to controller input, doing the same movements and getting a different response, I couldn't make out what was needed to get the slides to happen in the same way each time.

It seems to be reviewing well elsewhere, so maybe it's an expections vs reality thing - but if you wanted a new Daytona or OutRun 2, then this is probably not for you.