While the Switch is home to an abundance of arcade-style racing games, the same can’t be said for its more realistic pricing.
This is most likely because the Switch’s hardware would struggle to cope Grand Tourismyou are Forza Motorsportout of this world, so developers tend to make a mess of Nintendo’s system when they make their own serious racers. Plus, let’s face it, on the odd occasion that the Switch has received a port of a racing simulator, the results tend to leave something to be desired – for example, the mischievous visuals that have appeared in WRC games for years.
French indie developer Zero Games Studio tries to strike a middle ground with Hot Lap Racing, a game it calls a ‘simcade racer’ – that is, one that has serious simulation elements, but boasts the indulgent, fast-paced action of an arcade-style racer. The results really meet somewhere in the middle, for better or worse.
Being an indie studio, Zero Games doesn’t exactly have untold riches to throw at Ferrari and friends, so it would be unrealistic to expect Hot Lap Racing to be bursting at the seams with thousands of mega-brand manufacturers. What it offers instead is a more eclectic mix of real and look-alike cars that should raise the eyebrows of petrolheads.
Given the developer’s French location, it’s perhaps no surprise that Renault, Citroen and Peugeot feature in the game’s 50+ car list, but there are also some interesting manufacturers that don’t regularly appear in racing games, such as Alpine, Venturi , Noble, Minardi and Lola.
This is 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 historical categories, allowing Zero Games to instead showcase some of the more interesting models from the past of simply all the modern vehicles available. can reach.
This dedication to the non-mainstream side of racing extends to the drivers you come up against, some of which are based on actual racers from various disciplines (others appear to be fake). There are over 100 of them, and they serve as your opponents in the game’s main mode – if you win a championship in which they compete, they’ll be added to your Driver Code, along 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 its career mode, where you take on a series of themed championships covering different disciplines and time periods. As you tick them off – and complete them well enough to earn high spots – you unlock parts for the 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 track variants) become overly familiar by the end.
There’s also local multiplayer for one to four racers – either individual races or entire championships – and online racing. Local split screen works well enough 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 hard to find one post-run as well.
As always, everything is important on the road itself, and that’s where Hot Lap Racing will share opinions. Performance has never been 1080p at 60fps for a game like this on the Switch, so the fact that the game is aiming for 30fps and achieves that for the most part is admirable, especially since the resolution never seems to drop to the extent that things start to look blurry – it stays nice and sharp, even in manual mode.
That said, it doesn’t always hit the 30fps target, and the game has a habit of stuttering during busy moments, including the start of virtually every race when multiple cars are on screen at the same time. It’s inevitable and it’s just something you’ll have to deal with until the pack spreads out a bit and there are fewer cars right in front of you.
The handling is quite different depending on the type of car you have chosen. Single seat open wheel cars (F1 style) have tight steering and are probably the most satisfying to drive, but other types have very loose steering and have to slide you all over the place, which isn’t as comfortable as it sounds. Here, the ‘simcade’ philosophy of the game bites him in the butt, because in his attempt to be a jack of all trades, he never quite hits the nail on the head.
Gamers looking for a more realistic simulation experience will be frustrated by the lack of tuning options, slippery handling and the frankly awful music that plays (this can thankfully be turned off, but results in weak engine sounds). Those yearning for more arcade-style racing, meanwhile, will be annoyed by HLR’s insistence on handing out penalties for going off track, hitting enemies and the like, which means the game is in a weird middle ground to play around with. , but only to some extent.
We’d be lying if we said he didn’t have a good time with Hot Lap Racing, despite its flaws. Its performance certainly leaves a lot to be desired (especially during race starts) and you can never tell if it wants to be taken seriously, but we really like its eclectic selection of cars, its long Career mode and its focus on not just modern cars but and those of past times.
As long as you factor in its issues before buying the game, there’s certainly enough to do here to justify the £30 asking price, and the fact that it’s at least trying to do something a little different with its car roster is something petrolheads should probably reward with their custom anyway .
Conclusion
Hot Lap Racing is too serious to be arcade racing and its controls are too loose to be considered a serious simulation, but players looking for something that tries to go down the middle will be delighted by its unique car roster and its dedication to racing history, despite its problems with performance.
