![]() Winning races, total drift time and so on unlock car pieces you can buy with your cash prizes for winning. The eight characters have their own garage and so you unlock parts for their cars (speed, turn, drift equivalents) by completing various goals. There is also a fun and initially impressive customisation menu for each car. She’s coming to get you and take your bounty – tactical drifting time it is! This is where dirty driving becomes a forte as you damage other cars as you hit them but if you aim it right, they’ll slow to a crawl and lose a whole lot more HP getting up to speed again. This sees your HP meter for your car drop if you don’t keep above an ever increasing minimum speed. Cops and Robbers see a cop trying to smash the loot out of other players robbers cars, and robbers bank their money when they reach checkpoints – earning more via drifting and slipstreaming. Outside of races and time trials, there are two other fun modes. I hope a fifth environment comes – as Sumo Digital – has stated new modes, tracks and mods are coming in the future via free updates. The tracks play well but aren’t instantly distinguishable from each other and so it feels less. There are 16 tracks in all, although many blend into each other as there are four themed environments (four tracks for each). The AI fill out the other 4 slots anyway so why limit it at 4 and not 2? It. The servers were hardly full at launch and so getting 4 players to stay still long enough to actually go racing took far longer than it ever should be. ![]() The other mild quirk that annoyed me was the 4 player minimum limit for a multiplayer race. There doesn’t seem to be much of a middle ground and I hope that gets addressed over time. Except for Expert mode where they are so overpowered, I’d be eliminated by the checkpoint timer right on the last lap whilst in last. In single player campaign cups, I’d end up driving tactically to just save all my boosts for the last few corners and then surprise them all. The game doesn’t feel like it rewards clean and honest driving because the AI run their own rules and that is the games biggest issue. I ran a clean and perfect race and they suddenly blast past with mammoth new speed in the final few corners. I stopped on a track and they all stopped to a crawl. The AI has one of the most aggressive cases of rubber banding in recent memory. There is plenty of customisation for your cars but its all cosmetic only – including furry dice on the dashboard! It is part of the charm but along with the AI, it also becomes a little annoying too. The cars handle responsively but when you are power boosting round the final bends trying to overtake the extremely aggressive AI, you’ll feel like buckaroo trying to hold on. So if you fill it up, you’ll get 5 separate boosts for example. You’ll get several elements on the gauge and you use each one separately and in full. This, along with the powerful slipstreaming effect of following behind other cars, will increase you boost gauge. Doing so whilst steering will see the car drift out in a gloriously over the top drift. ![]() the car has grip for days and you’ll rarely need to fully brake for longer than a second or so. Taking cues from early kart games, this is all about drifting, slipstreaming and most importantly boosting. This also transfers over largely to how the cars handle too. I felt like I was right back in those arcades having a fantastic time. It is a sensory feast on the eyes and ears and that is Hotshot Racing’s biggest compliment. The chonky polygons, the bright colours, the eye bleeding speed of it all and the loud brash soundtrack served with ample stilton. Hotshot Racing evokes so much about that era of arcade racing perfectly. Hotshot Racing looks and feels amazing – its a fantastic recreation of 90’s arcades. Anyone below the age of perhaps 22 probably wouldn’t understand. Going to the arcade was an eye opening wow event. I was born in 1984 and when arcades were in their boom, I’d just gotten myself an upgrade from a ZX Spectrum 3 to a Sega Master System. Throwing itself right back into the time when Sega Rally, Daytona 500 and the likes were storming the arcades in the early to mid 90s, Hotshot Racing is a love letter to the bygone era of arcade racing.
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