Super Laser Racer

 
Developer: New Star Games
Released: Feb 2010
Hours Played: 6.5
Similar To: Brakes Are For Losers / Ultimate Racing 2D
Rating: 5/5 Parsnips




GAMEPLAY
This is probably one of those games that you'll either love or hate. Personally, after a little patience configuring the controls, I found it to be one of the best top-down arcade racers available. Each race begins with 12 vehicles of different colours and of fairly basic geometric shapes arranged on the starting grid. A fully zoomed out overhead camera shows you the whole track and as the camera zooms in, the countdown begins and with fingers at the ready... off you go! Ahead of you are 5 laps of twisting, turning and weaving excitement as you guide your car around the track in an effort to achieve victory. The main danger to overcome are the banks around the sides of the track. This area will not only painfully slow you down but will knock health off your shield. Oh, other cars fire at you as well!


BALANCE & PACE
Your shield's health is shown by a red bar at the top centre of the screen. Let this run down completely and it's instant death. Other things to look out for are yellow arrows which give you a short turbo boost and red squares that give you a weapon that you can fire at your adversaries. Action is fast and furious and once you've got used to the controls, is mighty fun. Personally, I found the keyboard to be easier at first with the W and S keys for acceleration and brake, arrows keys for left and right, and space bar for fire. However, I was soon back to the Xbox controller. Darting around the track is fluid and smooth, the artificial intelligence of the enemy vehicles is spot-on (rare in a racing game these days) and the pumping trance-like music will really put you in the sweet-spot of wholesome arcade-racing goodness.

PRESENTATION & DESIGN
From the title-screen come useful paths of Options and Leaderboards along with two choices to either have a Quick Race or a Tournament in the three difficulty settings of easy, normal and hard. A Quick Race gives you four different modes with Race and Time Trial being the two you'll most likely delve into. At the end of each Quick Race you're given information on your position, time and best lap-time etc. Tournament gives you six events to choose from with each containing four races against computer opponents. You get awarded points depending on what position you come in each race and your tally along with overall position after each race. The A.I. is pitch-perfect throughout giving you the feeling that you're almost playing against human opponents! 



PROGRESS SYSTEM
Stats and progress are clearly taken seriously by New Star Games. In addition to having your best time displayed when choosing a track for a quick race or a time-trial, you are given an opportunity to upload any best lap times after any race in whatever race-type or mode it was achieved in. To see how well you did, you're either taken to the leaderboard screen when uploading or you can click the Leaderboard path from the title-screen. From here, you can click on filters that will show your uploaded time for any of the 24 tracks, whether you achieved it in a race or a time-trial and whether you recorded it on the easy, normal or hard setting. Each time also shows which of the 12 vehicles were used. 
 

CONCLUSION
My initial impression of Super Laser Racer was not good but this was down to my incompetence and inept handling of the controls. A small bit of experimentation is also required in sussing out the handling of the cars which you'll choose before each race. Acceleration, top speed, steering and health are the four factors to be taken into consideration before taking the wheel. So where's the catch? Well, SLR is inflicted with an annoying bug which the developers have neglected to fix. It happens for various reasons (for me it is when I click on the Leaderboard path in the title-screen) and is followed with the words Exception Access Violation and the closing down of the game. Sure, as a whole the game works well but gaining easy access to those record times is vital in a game of this nature. Not a complete deal-breaker thankfully, as access can be gained to this information via other paths, but for a game as thrilling and enjoyable as this, we can certainly do without it.