‘Little Racers Street’ Review – Get Your Zoom On!
There is little as satisfying as the screech of tyres that accompanies a well taken corner at the highest possible speed. Maintaining control through a hairpin with the back-end pointing sideways, holding your car right on the point where drift becomes skid, thus exiting in the optimum attitude and at the optimum speed; if a driving game gets this part right then it has done the biggest part of the job. AI, career progression, upgrades and all the rest that is now part and parcel of a driving game is just window dressing, because when you play a driving game you do it to FEEL your way around those courses at speeds you could never hope to replicate on a real road.
Little Racers Street not only deals with this very well indeed, it absolutely nails it.
Within your first few races you will find ways to attack corners that minimise the speed you lose through them. You will delight in overtaking and undertaking the lead cars by dint of superior driving as opposed to just having a better car than them. Or hitting your Nitro at just the right moment, allowing you to blaze right by the other guy who just used up his boost to stay ahead of you. These moments are the ones that make you realise you are in a race.
Driving sims are all well and good, but all too often they turn into procession laps with the occasional rolling roadblock for any halfway decent player. Here, though, this pitfall is avoided. Instead, races take place on tight and short tracks, against AI opponents that range from the also-rans to Lewis Hamilton incarnate. Frequently, they bump into you on the corners, using your momentum to carry them and give them the best exit line. These guys are not shy about going for the win and if that means smashing you into the corner then they will gladly do it.
Such a racing feel is only possible when a game invests time into making the cars control as well as possible. Played from an overhead camera, it would have been quite easy for Milkstone Studios to have missed the ball. But what they have given us is cars that are responsive as well as intuitive to handle. Squeezing the right trigger speeds up, squeezing the left trigger slows down, pressing X turns on the Nitro, whilst a tap on the A button initiates a drift. You can also press Y to sound the horn, but these are all the controls you will need to learn. The skill in Little Racers Street comes from your mastery of your vehicle, even more so than from your knowledge of the course itself. This is doubly true when fighting the elements, as wet and snowy weather both play their part to affect your grip on the track.
When the racing is so enjoyable, it would be a shame if it was bogged down behind an overcomplicated menu system, or weighed down by excruciatingly long load times. Mercifully, the structure of Little Racers Street is such that races load within seconds. Whilst the setting is that of a city, with sections made available for the purposes of racing, most tracks are sufficiently small that loading is barely noticeable at all. Even better, the size of the courses also plays into the hands of keeping the field relatively compact. Whilst early on you will be leaving opponents eating your dust, stepping up into the next class usually means much closer races.
There is more than enough single player game here to justify the mere 80 MSP/$1 entry fee. Even without the inclusion of time trial leaderboards and challenges, one could not feel anything but satisfied with the wealth of content included. However, shortly after release, Milkstone Studios saw fit to update the title to include a traditional multiplayer mode. Admittedly, the servers are not always as full as they could be, but this is still an extremely welcome addition. Even better, whilst the single-player career mode is quite standard fare, progressing through classes with points accrued used to unlock additional and tougher classes, it never feels like too much of a slog. You are generally able to afford a car from the next class long before you feel ready to make the jump.
With a sizeable career mode, a veritable bucket list of challenges, multiplayer, time trial leaderboards and a playability that absolutely screams “ONE MORE GO!” thanks to the almost bite-sized nature of the individual races; it is impossible to avoid recommending this one. Little Racers Street is as polished and accomplished as anything on the XBox Live Indie Games channel and is very worthy of your investment.
You can purchase Little Racers Street on the Xbox Live Marketplace and you can find out more information on the game’s official website.
Review summary Pros:
Extremely
Cons:
No
Rating: 82%
