{"id":130228,"date":"2022-12-02T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-12-02T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/#article-141130"},"modified":"2022-12-02T14:00:00","modified_gmt":"2022-12-02T14:00:00","slug":"review-warp-drive-an-f-zero-inspired-racer-with-promise-and-performance-woes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2022\/12\/02\/review-warp-drive-an-f-zero-inspired-racer-with-promise-and-performance-woes\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Warp Drive – An F-Zero-Inspired Racer With Promise And Performance Woes"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/div>\n
\n
\"Warp<\/a>
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld\/Undocked)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Fun fact: if F-Zero GX<\/a>\u2014the last home console game in Nintendo\u2019s seminal futuristic racing series\u2014were a person, they would be old enough to vote<\/em> now. Indeed, it\u2019s been far<\/em> too long since we\u2019ve gotten a new F-Zero, which has led to copycats filling the void as best as they can. Some of these, like Fast RMX<\/a> or WipEout Omega Collection<\/a>, have done a great job of adding their own spin on that intense gameplay. Others, like Warp Drive<\/a>, have fumbled the ball a bit. Warp Drive started as a mobile game a couple of years ago and now has made its way onto the Switch, but don\u2019t let its origins immediately turn you off. Despite its shortcomings, there\u2019s a genuinely enjoyable time to be had here; we only wish it could be more consistent.<\/p>\n

Though Warp Drive is certainly a fast<\/em> game, we would say that its gameplay has more in common with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe<\/a> than it does with F-Zero or Fast RMX. Though you\u2019re moving at lightspeed through gravity-defying courses, much of your success hinges on how effectively you can acquire and use items to give yourself an edge. Much like in Mario Kart, there are various points on the track where you can drive over a line of \u2018warp crystals\u2019 that will give you an item, though here the effect is not random. You can hold onto each crystal as long as you want, and each one can be used to either launch a missile, activate a short boost, drop a mine behind you, or teleport you to an alternate route on the track at specific points.<\/p>\n

\"Warp<\/a>
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We appreciated the removal of the randomized items as it allows you to take a more strategic approach to driving and doesn\u2019t leave you out of luck if you get a bad roll. Everyone\u2019s been there in Mario Kart 8 where you desperately need help holding down first place, but get a useless coin from an item box. Here, there\u2019s always something useful you can do with your crystals, although we found that their application leaves a little bit to be desired. The missiles, for example, can only be fired if you\u2019ve locked onto an enemy in front of you. Not only is it difficult to lock on to target the specific car you want to hit, but we noted many instances where firing the missile crashed into the wall instead of another car.<\/p>\n

Track layouts are a little homogenous, they do have a multi-tiered track design, and we enjoyed how each course had distinctive themes, though we wish these themes were integrated better as gameplay mechanics. At various points in a track, you can choose to either trigger a boost to go through a false floor or a short-range teleport to take you to an alternate route. These secondary routes take about as much time to traverse as the primary path, but they\u2019re useful for those moments when you\u2019re stuck in the middle of the pack and keep getting blasted by items, as you can thin out the herd a bit by taking another way.<\/p>\n

The main draw of the experience here is the tournament mode, which sees you going through themed bundles of four tracks at a time. After each race, you\u2019re then given coins and experience points according to your performance. We\u2019re not really sure what the experience points actually do<\/em>\u2014maybe unlocking access to better things in the shop?\u2014but the coins can be spent to randomly selects three upgrades or cosmetics you can apply to your car. Once you\u2019ve bought it in the shop, you then own that part forever and can later swap it with any other parts you\u2019ve acquired.<\/p>\n

\"Warp<\/a>
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At first, we were a little bothered by this shop system, as it doesn\u2019t give you full control over how to build your car. Maybe one of the parts on offer is somewhat<\/em> appealing, but you\u2019re never sure if the next round of shop offerings might have something better that you won\u2019t be able to afford if you buy something now. Still, we appreciated how this controlled approach to the shop keeps you guessing and makes you try out parts you otherwise might not have considered. Plus, it doesn\u2019t take that<\/em> long to unlock all the parts anyway.<\/p>\n

In addition to the core tournament mode, there are also mission and survival modes. Mission mode tasks you with objectives like collecting a certain number of coins in a tight time window or hitting a specific number of rivals with missiles within a single lap. Each track has its own suite of missions on offer, which helps familiarize you more with their layouts while sharpening your driving skills, and the missions progressively get more difficult as you unlock more.<\/p>\n

Survival mode sees you running a gauntlet of races through randomly picked tracks, with each one asking you to finish the race in a certain place at a minimum. Surviving each race will net you coins, and as your win streak goes up, the number of coins you get also increases. While these two modes don\u2019t necessarily add any new content to the mix, we felt that they still added to the experience by introducing some interesting modifiers to the core racing. They also act as a nice means of farming experience and coins, which can help build up your collection of parts faster.<\/p>\n

\"Warp<\/a>
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld\/Undocked)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Unfortunately, the technical performance is not quite up to snuff. Warp Drive appears to aim for 30 FPS, but we noted intermittent instances of chugging frame rates in every race we participated in. This is somewhat understandable given how chaotic the action on the screen can be, but then the visuals don\u2019t appear to be that<\/em> advanced for the Switch hardware\u2014this was originally a mobile game, after all. Hopefully, the developers will find a way to patch out these issues in an update; the frame hitches aren\u2019t bad enough to ruin Warp Drive, but they certainly do negatively affect the experience.<\/p>\n

These technical issues become especially obvious in multiplayer. Though there isn\u2019t any online multiplayer, you can play locally with up to four players in split screen, but the implementation here is middling at best. Having just two players on is at least a decent and mostly stable experience, but ratcheting up to three or four players causes performance to drop substantially. This is especially disappointing given the clear potential here for a fun competitive experience; what could be an interesting and cheap alternative to Mario Kart 8 becomes a poor imitation that you\u2019ll hardly feel like showing to your friends.<\/p>\n

Despite the technical issues, Warp Drive\u2019s presentation still manages to impress with the strong art style on display. The heavily saturated neon colors, bright lights, and 90\u2019s punk aesthetic all combine to create an overwhelmingly trippy world. Whether you\u2019re racing alongside a pirate ship or beneath the tentacles of a giant squid, every track has some kind of visual spectacle to set itself apart from the others. All this is met with music that mixes together rock and hip-hop with a whole lot of synthesizers to make for a high-octane soundtrack that keeps the energy level high. Warp Drive may be a little disappointing in its execution, but never let it be said that it doesn\u2019t at least leave an impression.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Conclusion<\/h2>\n

Warp Drive feels like it\u2019s a strong predecessor to what could be a great sequel someday. Its high-speed, strategic approach to racing is a joy to play when the FPS slowdown isn\u2019t getting out of hand, and its art style feels like something truly distinct in the ‘kart’ racing genre. If it weren\u2019t for a collection of some important misses\u2014like the awkward item usage or the instability of multiplayer\u2014this one could be a real winner. Even as is, it\u2019s still a game that we would recommend you pick up when there\u2019s a deep enough sale. There\u2019s enough single-player content to keep you busy for a while and even if it disappoints, Warp Drive can be quite fun once you get into it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld\/Undocked) Fun fact: if F-Zero GX\u2014the last home console game in Nintendo\u2019s seminal futuristic racing series\u2014were a person, they would be old enough to vote now. Indeed, it\u2019s been far too long since we\u2019ve gotten a new F-Zero, which has led to copycats filling the void as best as they can. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-130228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nintendo-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130228\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}