CarX Street is an open world street racing / tuner culture / car customization game that is ridiculously fully featured. Nothing is licensed - no licensed parts or real cars - and the soundtrack is full of artists you've probably never heard of before in genres you probably don't listen to. That's all fine, though, because it means they can sell this gigantic game for only $30 and you can be confident it isn't going to suddenly get delisted in a few years since there are no licenses to expire.
The car list is full of recognizable vehicles even if they don't have the real badges on them. Just about anything you could want is here. Loads of hot hatchbacks, classic muscle cars, BMWs of all sorts, Supras, Skylines, Porsches, a few Lamborghinis, Corvettes, even pickups, vans, estate cars, and lots more. There are dozens and dozens of cars to choose from and they're all fully customizable and tuneable.
The visual customization is wild because in addition to all sorts of body kits and hoods and bumpers, you can also change the steering wheel and gearshift handle and seats, among other things. Performance tuning options let you upgrade just about every part of the engine and drivetrain and then dial them in with the exact settings you want. And you need to tune it, too, because if you just bolt on new parts without dialing the settings in you definitely won't get the performance you expect. I'm talking the difference between 170MPH and 220+MPH top speed just by adjusting some things. It's all fairly intuitive and the game does explain what changing the settings will actually do, which is great.
The game world you play in is remarkably well done. The city is a sort of a mix of Los Angeles and Tokyo, but there is miles and miles of countryside highway and freeways to drive as well as tons of super twisty Japanese mountain roads to drift around. The top right corner of the map is a complex of a few different closed race courses that are pretty great as well. The map is big and full of variety and is pretty fun to just drive around in. There are collectible goodies all over the place, too, which makes randomly driving around even more worthwhile. There aren't any police chases, which I'm fine with because police chases in games are freaking boring.
I'll add that the game does a pretty good job of throwing money at you. When the game was in early access on PC everyone complained about the economy, but the full version release definitely ironed out those kinks. You earn decent cash for winning races and leveling up, but all of the various collectibles give you money and you even passively earn money just while you're driving around. It's not like you can just buy any car and upgrades you want at any time, but there is a logical progression through the game the economy was built around and I never had any issues buying and upgrading the cars I needed at the time.
There isn't really much of a setup here other than you're a new racer in town and have to work your way up. Blah blah blah. It isn't as flashy and stylish as a Need for Speed, but there also isn't an incredibly dumb story full of lame tryhard characters you instantly forget about constantly getting in the way. CarX Street is purely focused on racing, and I appreciate that.
The flip side of this approach, however, is that it makes everything pretty dry and repetitive and all of the various car clubs you can join pretty much blend together. There are 14 club you can join, and each club has 15-19 races. And when you beat a car club, you can then do another set of special elite races for bigger payouts. Each club has some sort of gimmick and eventually you end up racing in all corners of the map in increasingly fast and powerful cars.
Like I said, though, you do kind of get bored of it long before you see it all because it all blends together. There's no ultimate motivation really compelling you to move on to the next club. I admit I got bored about 15 hours in and stopped playing after only finishing 6 of the clubs. The game is only $30, though, so I feel like I got my money's worth. And, of course, I'll likely go back and pick it up again at some point.
The gameplay is where things get especially interesting in CarX Street. You might be aware that there is a CarX Drift Racing game also available that's kind of notorious for its difficulty, but CarX Street isn't remotely as hardcore as that one. CarX Street is a sim-cade style game sort of like Forza Horizon, but with more of a focus on drifting.
The drifting here is unique because it isn't just a "hit the handbrake and magically go around corners" button like in so many other arcade-style tuner games. When you hit the handbrake your car instantly, and unrealistically, rotates and the longer you hold the brake the sharper the angle you car ends up pointed. But here's the difference in this game - if you're going too fast, you won't turn at all and your momentum will still carry you in the original direction you started in. Instead, you have to actually be going a reasonable speed for a given corner and then start your drift. You have to hit the brakes and slow down and then hit the handbrake to start the drift, which takes some getting used to, but is really satisfying when you figure out all out.
I also have to say the CPU drivers are surprisingly and shockingly terrible here. It's kind of refreshing, honestly, to have CPU opponents that actually make mistakes and aren't totally perfect, but they seriously crash a LOT. You're never really out of a race because you can almost always count on the CPU drivers screwing up somewhere. In most games the A.I. traffic cars are there exclusively to screw the player over and don't really affect the CPU drivers, but in CarX Street the other drivers hit the traffic just as often, if not more so, than you do.
It makes the races dynamic and interesting because you never know what's going to happen. And I know this is naughty, but I found myself having even more fun by intentionally nudging the CPU cars into traffic and walls and other stuff at just about every opportunity like I was playing Burnout. The thing about this game, however, is that it isn't like you come to a dead stop and are totally screwed if you hit something. You generally keep rolling at a decent speed and can still catch up, which makes it less frustrating and more fun.
There's also online play, of course, but I don't really do that. I'll say that there seems to be plenty of people playing on Xbox, though, because you can see lots of other players driving around the map all the time.
All in all, I've had a pretty great time with CarX Street. It does get repetitive after a while because it's sort of dry and not flashy and over the top like other open world racers have become, but the core foundation of the game is undeniably solid. And for just $30, it's totally fine if you get bored well before you see it all. You can always come back. There's tons and tons of content, the racing is super fun, and it looks decent enough. The performance tuning is deep and satisfying and the visual customization gives you tons of options to build the car you want. CarX Street is just a good game all around that is easy to recommend if you've spent the last 20 years waiting for a new Need for Speed Underground. It's not quite the same, but definitely scratches that itch.
Comments
Post a Comment