As a child there was nothing quite as fun on a rainy day than building a Scalextric track all around the house, decorated with houses and trees to create an authentic race track. Well now that childhood memory can be lived virtually, well kind of.
The game has 2 modes, Race and Build, which are pretty self explanatory. Race offers a selection of 12 country titled circuits bearing no relevance to race tracks in those countries as you race 1 vs 1 against an AI controlled and local player on the sofa.
Race in a choice of 4 cars with 4 different car vissual liveries on each. The cars all offer the same performance though and there are no different attributes to say using the muscle car over the roadster. The first opportunity missed as the garage feels pretty empty. Maybe your “friend” stole the other cars when they last came over to race you.
The “Race” mode is pretty buggy with constant crashes and poor frame performance which is surprising because there really isn’t a lot going on here. Tracks are lined as black Scalextric track parts and the entire back drop for every race is a bare bedroom. What would have been great to see would be the addition of scenery around the track and a first person camera as the camera doesn’t give you a clear indication of an approaching corner.
“The game feels more like a cash grab off the back of the Scalextric franchise.”
Even a race line would have done the track in terms of knowing when to hold off the accelerate. There is no braking here, just a control of speed, so going around a corner at 100% throttle will have your car barrel rolling off the track and across the wooden floor, which sounds atrocious in terms of sound effects.
I did encounter a game-ending bug mind, which left me glued to the track of my own custom and unable to race on any other track. The only way to fix this was a fresh install of the game, which if I wasn’t reviewing this title I probably wouldn’t have bothered.
Where the game does pick up credit though is its “Build” mode, which is essentially a variety of track pieces and a large open floor plan to build a race track full of twists and turns until your heart is content. The track editor has a snap guide as well so when you decide to join the end of track to the start line it will join these together, although on a few of my test creations, the start line was bugged and had the floor coming through the track.
It’s visual bugs and low frame rate that hold this game back and that comes down to the developement strategy. The game feels more like a cash grab off the back of the Scalextric franchise and sadly it falls short of any expectation you may have.
Generally the game feels really low budget and unpolished for what is officially licensed by Scalextric and had so much potential to capture both a mature and younger audience if the tracks were more detailed and interesting and more importantly fun to race around. I couldn’t think of anything worse on a rainy day if I was stuck playing this version of Scalextric.
CX Score
-
41%
Summary
Pros
- Track Builder is pretty fun
Cons
- Buggy mess
- Poor performance
- Crashing out of game frequent