The closer you get to reality in a racing game, the faster I lose interest. I love racing games, or just car games in general. I play them all the time and have been playing most of my life, but they don’t interest me Gran Turismo world. Even Forza AND Crew they are pushing it. It doesn’t actually happen until you strike Burnout territory where you can get my attention.
But I particularly like racing titles from the days before polygonal 3D dominated. Overtake, RadMobileincredible Cool riders: games that had to rely on graphical tricks and math to keep their paths reaching to the horizon. One such method was Sega’s “Super Scaler” technique, which stretched, contracted, and rotated sprites to make them appear to be closer or farther from the screen. This resulted in games like the ones above Rad Mobile and, more importantly, 1988 Power drift. That’s right there The Victorious Heat Rally he gets his project.
When did this happen? successful Kickstarter campaign in 2020, The Victorious Heat Rally focused solely on Super Scaler visuals. Much of this was lost in the final version, but the result is a clear love letter to a beloved corner of the arcade.
Despite its name, The Victorious Heat Rally is a combination of race tracks, rallies and side modes. If you go through the campaign mode, you will be taken to a map screen where you must complete each cup track individually before becoming more competitive in the Grand Prix. You can also play classic Arcade GP and time trials, but these feel like side activities with the main Championship mode.
Vibrant visuals dominate the entire game. Early development footage of the game showed a closer reference to the Super Scaler theme, in which tracks are made up of segmented sprites. This was abandoned somewhere along the way in favor of a smoother look to the tracks, and while much of the scenery is still 2D sprites, the environments do contain a lot of 3D elements. Thanks to the sacrifices, it doesn’t look like a lost arcade game from a bygone era. Although you can play with a pixel filter, which is what I preferred.
But the spirit is still there. The tracks are veritable roller coasters that dip, climb and circle around each other. The camera tilts as the car corners tough and shakes over tough bumps. It’s also speedy. Very speedy. The visual style is largely excellent, with the vivid colors and chibi proportions giving it a unique feel, even compared to older titles it draws inspiration from such as Power drift AND Choro-Q.
As a racing game, The Victorious Heat Rally plays very similarly to last time Mario Kart games without weapons and items. There is a forceful emphasis on drifting through the corners (or just as much as possible) because it will give you energy. That’s exactly right Mario Kart a drift system where you build levels of “spark” based on the speed and tightness of the turn. It works well, but can be a little weird at times.
I think this is partly due to my gamepad choice. I played on the PlayStation Dualsense, which has an analog trigger. Sometimes my drift would change direction if I went directly into the opposite corner instead of using the accumulated boost. This is just a theory, but I think this could happen if you release the drift button (trigger) but don’t let go of it completely.
I was very frustrated with the gamepad controls, and I think it started after the recent pre-release update as I don’t remember having problems when I first started out. What was most frustrating was that it logged multiple button presses when navigating through the menu, so if I wanted to select a song to see what medal I had on it, it would sometimes go straight to the starting grid, forcing me to open the menu and abandon the race.
For that matter, I don’t feel like I should choose a race to see what medal I get in it. There should be a faster way; at least showing it on the world map itself. To access later GPs you need a certain number of points accumulated, so I would have to individually go back to previous events to see where I only had silver. Worse still, riding off the edge of the map is supposed to lead to the next cup, but it often leads me to some random cup that may even be in a completely different riding class. This became frustrating in the later stages of Master Mode.
The frustration is compounded by the incredibly uneven difficulty curve. Sometimes I found myself in a raid whose target time was much shorter than seemed reasonable. It would feel like I ran a perfect race in a high-end car and then found myself missing the gold by a second or two. So I repeated this over and over again and got the same result every time. And it started happening in the second grade.
This may sound like a matter of skill, but when I’m on the track again in a GP context, I would absolutely wipe the floor with computer controls. In fact, whether I struggled with rally racing or not, I never lost a single GP that was set up as a real event. The challenge should stiffen up towards the end, rather than being straightforward apart from a few random occurrences.
Occasional difficulty spikes caused me to abandon my perfect attempt at gold, so I didn’t complete the game completely. The last GP I attended seemed to require gold on every track to enter, and I didn’t feel like wasting the split second it took to complete some rallies. My frustration was already at its peak, though I could see myself coming back later once I had cooled down.
Many of them indicate a plain lack of shine. These are things that can be patched later, but right now it’s not the end of the world. This may hinder your racing well-being, but it won’t completely destroy it.
However, another problem arises later in the game, which is that despite its outward style and vivid colors, there is a strange monotony to the game. The Victorious Heat Rally. Many of the cars you can drive look the same: a series of boxy coupes separated by odd, more curved numbers. Honestly, I couldn’t tell some of them apart, which took a lot of the fun out of unlocking novel characters. Adding colors to their design may have been enough to add a bit of personality, but most are just flat painting. Speaking of which, additional colors must be unlocked for each individual by winning enough races. And you can’t choose; they unlock in a linear manner.
Tracks also usually run together. They are all smoothly winding roller coasters with lots of hills. Well, not everyone. You can certainly tell the difference between a snowy area with slippery streets and an airport theme with narrow roads. However, they often lack the hooks found in, say, a F-Zero path. There are no unique hazards here, a few with 90-degree turns and few ridiculously long jumps. I think part of the problem is that they go by so quickly. Most of them are great to race, but there are so many of them that they start to blur.
The soundtrack has a similar problem. The melodies are mostly pleasant, sonorous and energetic, but you’ll miss them if you blink your ears. There is also one particular song that I absolutely hate. I think it only came up twice throughout the entire game, but it was enough to make me consider turning off the music altogether.
Overall, I really liked it The Victorious Heat Rally. But every time I sat with it, the frustration grew until I had to take a break. And it’s not just frustration with the racing itself, either. When the wheels are on the pavement, everything is fine. It’s energetic, quirky and full of fun, drifting action.
The problem is a house built for real racing. Beneath the lively colors and retro sensibility lies a disappointingly unpolished and monotonous feel. It took me just under 6 hours to get through the championship, but I feel like it would have been better with half that and with more attention to detail. In the current situation The Victorious Heat Rally It’s not the bumpiest course I’ve ever been on, but it could apply some fine-tuning.
