I don’t know what to think of Fast Racing Neo. If you haven’t heard about the ultra-slick, high-octane racer that all the cool Nintendo kids are playing, well, the gist of it is already explained in the title. Fast Racing Neo is a futuristic, high-speed racing game by German developer Shin’en Multimedia. It demands twitch reflexes, narrow focus, and a tiny margin for error. I like it. But I hate it.
I played Fast Racing Neo over the weekend for nearly 10 hours and have completed two of the cups: Subsonic League and Supersonic League. The game is deceiving because the level of excitement presented by the upbeat tunes and the obnoxious announcer don’t match the hell that the game puts you through to complete its races. I’m not even looking to achieve a gold ranking in each tour– 3rd place will definitely do. I’m used to difficult games—last year I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Bloodborne—but this racer has a very steep learning curve that never seems to let up. Unlike most racing games, Fast Racing Neo doesn’t really have difficulty modes that allow the player to transition from learning the mechanics and becoming acclimatized to the speed of the vehicles, to expertly manoeuvring around obstacles and whizzing around corners. The game demands too much from the player at the outset, and that’s why I love it– and that’s why I hate it.
In the opening hours, I felt like I was playing a game of bowling with the guards up, not a racer. Unlike the usual racing sims or karting chases I am used to, the tracks in Fast Racing Neo restrict your machine to very narrow boundaries, and they move too darn fast. I couldn’t handle the speed and ended up ricocheting from the left barrier of the track to the right barrier of the track until my vehicle finally found a sweet spot in the center. All of the bouncing around severely slowed my machine and pummeled my confidence to an all-time low.
Along those lines, there are points where the tracks in Fast Racing Neo give way to flying mechanics. Segments of the track are divided by open air and require a skillful take-off from one edge of the ramp to the track below. My zig-zagging, incompetent play style was certainly not conducive to these areas that were devoid of any kind of rail. What made it worse were the few times I was lucky enough to have my machine pointing in the right direction; I would often overshoot the landing and crash into one of its walls.
Fast Racing Neo is not forgiving. If you so much as touch a solid part of the track when flying, your vehicle will be blown to smithereens, with a three-second penalty no less. Probably one of the most frustrating things about the game is that any error will cost you dearly. Many a time I was still in the game at 3rd or 2nd place, only to have a poorly executed jump or an obstacle-crashing incident send me to the back of the pack. Normally a racing game will reset your vehicle by spawning on the piece of track you were aiming for—well, this ain’t no Mario Kart. As mentioned, any kind of incident in Fast Racing Neo is followed by an explosive sequence that literally adds seconds of time your lap. To make it even more unbearable, you are only equipped with a bit of boost juice to help you catch up, and the AI never slows down.
Oh the AI in Fast Racing Neo, let me tell you. These aggressive, speed-hungry, violet little bastards will stop at nothing to send your vehicle into orbit. They will drive straight into you, on top of you, and they never seem to err off. I can’t recall how many crashes I suffered during my playtime this weekend, but I can tell you that it was refreshing to see my opponents get their little brains made of 0s and 1s splatter against one of the many track hazards. A little schadenfreude I was, pardon my German.
Now let me dial things back a bit. Imagine that all I have said so far, all of my qualms with the game, are just unsurfaced compliments. All of my anxiety, rage, and protestation are latent pointers toward an experience I find thoroughly thrilling. For every time I wanted to take a chunk out of my Wii U Pro Controller and fry it up on the stove, I had a few occasions where I wanted to shout from my rooftop that I was a racing champion, all the while dawning my replica Super Mario hat. And that is just if I reached a 3rd place standing. The point is that the seldom occasion that I actually conquered a tournament, feelings of overwhelming success would wash over me—feelings that nullified the frustration from my several previous attempts and all of my disgruntled expressions that followed.
My love-hate relationship with the game is what holds me back from giving a definitive answer on what I think of it. Ask me when I have successfully completed a tournament, and I’ll tell you that the game is tough yet rewarding. On the flipside, ask me about my enjoyment of the game after I have just fell behind from 1st to 10th place because of a random mech hand that decided to rest its palm on the floor of the track; I’ll probably tell you that the game is unfair, has poor racing mechanics, has unrealistic AI, and is made by a group of developers who want to ruin the lives of reward-seeking millennials.
You will have to excuse my indecision. While I can neither recommend nor dissuade you from purchasing Fast Racing Neo, I must go play more of it. I suppose that counts for something. For the time being, read Logan’s full review of the game; he seems to have it all figured out. Just pray that I don’t begin my week with a potent measure of self-doubt and an extra-crispy fried Pro Controller.