A major downside of triple-A title production costs is the need for publishers and developers to play it safe in order to seal at least some sales, which has in turn made the market far too homogenous and honestly a bit bland. The indie market, on the other hand, remains interesting, full of potential and innovation and it's vastly affordable for the average dedicated gamer that can't waste loads of cash on games on a monthly basis.
In other words, it's the perfect market for someone like me and while I snubbed it during its early, modest steps, it is high time I focused on it and made it my primary source of gaming.
But before we touch on the Indie powerhouses, let's start small. Like, really small. Little Racers STREET is a game about -and this will blow your mind- little cars racing on the street!
It's actually a sequel to an XBox Live overhead racing title in the style of racing classics such as Super Cars for the Amiga.
The sequel is also available on PC and Mac and while it maintains its overhead perspective, it approaches the game in a more Super Off-Road kind of way. So the gist of the experience is small cars, designed after real-life vehicles ranging from old family automobiles to racing powerhouses and KITT (sans the special abilities), with the weight of an embryo in its first viable month and the physics somewhere between walking on the moon and magic!
Races are plenty and take place in a singular city, relying on constantly changing routes. Despite the lack of varied environments the continuous switching of routes depending on class and consequently skill make each attempt feel different and exciting enough. The game also spices things up with different weather conditions that affect car physics significantly.
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| There is excitement in its simplicity. |
Having said that, some varied tracks, maybe in a different part of the city or off-road, perhaps throwing some secret shortcuts in for flavor would have helped greatly, especially visually. One of the better things about the old Need For Speed games (pre-Underground) that makes me go back to them even now was the tracks were inspired by real-life settings that made the player feel like they were taking a fast-paced sight-seeing tour all over the world.
The game was made with an isometric camera in mind, but other options are also available including a chase camera, behind the car, for racing traditionalists. I favor that one myself, but it shouldn't fool anyone into believing this is a smaller-scale NFS or FORZA. Little Racers STREET is an extremely fast-paced game with very simplistic driving mechanics that relies on fast reflexes and the proper and timely use of the handbrake and nitro boost functions. It only aims at invoking the primal feelings of satisfaction via beating opponents surrounded by ridiculous speeds and loud noises and music.
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| Speeding off a bridge, while it's snowing. This can't possibly go wrong! |
Speaking of which, the twist, if one can call it that is the addition of a semi-proper career mode, which is rare -if not a first- for this type of racer. The player is expected to pick one of a multitude of cars, categorized in different classes and then compete in races of the corresponding class to earn cash, a better spot in the racer ranks and get more powerful vehicles, customize them and upgrade them until they've completed the mode.
Choosing between purchasing a new automobile or upgrading the existing one will require some careful consideration, but even all the upgrades won't ever bump a car to a class higher than the one just above the manufacturer class. In simple terms, a class D vehicle can be upgraded to a Class C car, but not to Class B or A, which means sooner or later, the player will need a new vehicle to continue the game.
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| Upgrading my Mini-Cooper to reach a whooping total max of 50MPH! Radical. |
Via meeting requirements and completing achievements, the game itself grants monetary bonuses and guarantees to hand out a higher-level automobile whenever the player is promoted to a higher class. This may be shooting the shop function in the foot, though, as it's still perfectly possible to get through the game with the stock cars the game provides and a few upgrades to help cope in the harder contests.
Getting to the Class A races, however, means the game is more-or-less over. There is no point to continue from there on, outside of satisfying your completionist streak and earning enough money to buy all the automobiles. But Class A races aren't even good for that, as the cost of repairing the damage your car takes while racing -and it's always going to be a lot of damage- is proportional to the quality of the car. Class A vehicles cost a fortune to fix and it's customary for three quarters of the winnings to go to repairs alone. Class C winnings are lower, but C-graded cars are also far cheaper to fix, meaning the player comparatively keeps more money than they would after a Class A race.
This significant system imbalance aside, there's also multiplayer. Sadly I couldn't try it as it seems nobody's playing the game online anymore.
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| Achievements that grant cash, cars and longevity. |
Special nod has to be given to the opponent AI, because it's a cheating bastard! Racing AI usually is, as racing titles are generally competitive games and the AI exists only as a poor second player stand-in. In Little Racers STREET, the AI may as well be renamed Agent Smith and just start spawning brick walls right in front of you.
Once the player gets past the Class-D races, the game practically requires them to have perfect handle of the game mechanics, the car they're using and the tracks. In the normal difficulty mode, there's always going to be at least one opponent, who will be perfect: perfect reflexes, perfect response time, perfect knowledge of car physics and the racing track. Only that perfect opponent also doesn't need to worry about the possibility of human error.
The easy difficulty mode is better balanced, as the occasional fuck-up from the better opponents isn't unheard of, while the encounters remain challenging.
The difficulty isn't a deal-breaker, mainly because winning isn't strictly required to play through the game, it just makes progress easier with better cash inflow and achievements. It can still be very annoying, however, especially since it transforms a lot of races into trial-and-error and causes plenty of restarts until the player is familiar with the racing track.
Admittedly, opponent AI isn't the only thing that completely screwed me over during races. There are two cardinal sins the game performs that really got on my nerves.
The first such sin is the ridiculous cramming of opponents in the smaller circuits. The large, mostly straight tracks feature the classic 5-8 racers, but smaller drift races that take place around a city block at best are crammed with up to 12 total players. The game is fast and car control is by its nature limited. With several laps on these circuits, there is a lot of added vehicle damage and getting off-track that the player has no control over, as races turn into a clusterfuck.
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| The clusterfuck that are Drift circuits. |
The other sin is the barriers. As the races take place on that one closed-off section of that one city, the barriers that block some pathways are invisible walls that flash bright red. These are extremely hard to see from afar and have caused me endless pain and race restarts, because heading toward them at top speed makes them impossible to see in time to turn the right way.
This isn't a big problem when playing with the isometric camera, because you have a better view of the track and there are flashing arrows on the street that point the way. But when playing with the chase camera, both the street pointers and the invisible walls are extremely hard to make out until it's too late.
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| Guess how that ended. |
Overall, there's a lot to like about Little Racers STREET. It's a small title, even for an indie, that harkens back to classic 8- and 16-bit racers and it's very accessible even for newcomers. It's obviously not the choice for racing enthusiasts, but it has enough depth to maintain a player's interest and attention. The difficulty provides considerable challenge and for as big of a cheating bastard as it is, the more dedicated and -I cannot stress this enough- patient player will have a reason to perfect their driving and tackle the career mode on the hardest difficulty setting for increased winnings. The entire idea behind the system is to start on easy and gradually increase the difficulty setting as the players' skills and familiarity with the game mechanics grow. Plus the game's genuinely fun!
"Fun" may not always be enough when you're called to put down your money for something, of course and other factors play in, like replayability value, which this game generally lacks. Progression is fast and short of the occasional race for giggles, there's not much reason to go back. That's why it's a pity that the multiplayer component has been rendered useless already, because it could potentially increase the game's lifespan.
However, Little Racers STREET is still good value for money, as it goes for 1-3 bucks on a few digital distribution platforms. I got mine on Desura, an indie heaven that spawned out of the Mod Database, which I very much like; the name alone makes the platform sound like a secret sect of Samurai sworn to protect the fidelity of gaming.
The game's also up on Steam Greenlight and if voted for release, it could help with that multiplayer desertion, so go, vote and buy if you're looking for fast-paced engine revving in a classic racing experience with a lot of screaming and high blood pressure.
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| Still enough incentive for me to play the game. Damn you Glen A. Larson! Damn you and the Hoff's off-beat charm! |
"LITTLE RACERS STREET" was developed by and is property of Milkstone Studios.
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