Game Reviews

Hard Racing

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iOS
| Hard Racing
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Hard Racing
|
iOS
| Hard Racing

Like a self-designed car with a production run of one, Hard Racing is an impressive feat of engineering that's more a prototype than the real deal.

Created by one man in six months, the game manages to ape the look and feel of its more polished rivals for a good few minutes after first starting its engine.

But take away the context for the game and you’re left with a racer that’s overpriced and missing a number of very important components.

Short track

There are just three different tracks to drive around, for a start.

Admittedly, two of these - Railroad and Airport - are packed with incidental detail, like moving trains and a landslide, that make them a little more entertaining than the norm to drive, but the Bad Night track is just dark, confusing, and, frankly, rubbish.

There’s no structure to the racing other than picking between three different types of race before you set off. These consist of a standard Time Trial, a race against a single CPU car that loves to get itself jammed in the scenery, and a very slight variation on the Time Trial again.

Handling is, thankfully, pretty fun - especially on the slippy Hard (Men) mode that sees your rear-wheel drive car over-steer at every possible moment.

Likewise, the graphics are fairly good, with objects like barrels and baggage trolleys reacting with an enjoyable amount of chaotic verve when hit.

Suspension of disbelief

You can choose between the default Top Down, Isometric, or Smooth 3D (behind the car) viewpoints, but the latter is the only one where you can actually see what’s coming up next, thanks to the overly-zoomed in camera.

Outside smacking into things and racing around the same three tracks over and over again, there’s really not much to do in Hard Racing.

There are no other cars to choose from, no leaderboards save the ‘best time’ for each event, and nothing that will pull you back for more once you've raced through the game the first time (which takes under an hour).

It also feels a little shabby around the edges. Small things such as shortcuts that literally bypass half the track feel cheap, while being dumped back to the main menu every time you finish a race is an unnecessary annoyance.

Hard Racing is an admirable achievement in one way - the handling and graphics belie the nature of their origins - but the game itself won’t get anybody's motor running.

Hard Racing

Beautiful but slim and unexciting, Hard Racing is a title you’ll want to steer clear of
Score
Will Wilson
Will Wilson
Will's obsession with gaming started off with sketching Laser Squad levels on pads of paper, but recently grew into violently shouting "Tango Down!" at random strangers on the street. He now directs that positive energy into his writing (due in no small part to a binding court order).