Picture this. You’re racing along a track in a light-cycle from Tron to the beat of some electronic music. All the while, the background pulsates and changes color with the song, flashing bright lights the whole time. That’s Music Racer for you, except it’s more boring than you would expect.
Music Racer is a rhythm game that’s all flash with no substance to support the glitz and glamour of the tracks you drive along. The gameplay is incredibly simplistic. For each song, you switch between three different lanes on your driving track to avoid obstacles and pick up beats to get points. That’s the game right there. What do the points you collect get you? Well by getting a certain amount, all you’re able to do is unlock new tracks to race on and new vehicles to use. Nothing more. While the tracks and vehicles that you unlock are visually cool, they’re ultimately not worth the amount of time it’ll take to unlock them all.
In fact, some of the tracks are downright frustrating to play on because of how they’re designed. There are a couple tracks that are constantly twisting and turning, causing it to be difficult to be able to keep track of upcoming beats that you need to collect. Other levels just do far too much visually and light up the screen to near blinding levels that keep you from even being able to see the beats. I’ve never been to a rave, but I imagine that playing these levels is similar to being at one while tripping off some hardcore drugs. The best levels are the ones that keep the track flat and the visual spectacle to a moderate level. It’s a shame too because the other ones are a sight to look at, but they’re just not worth playing on.
The game does offer a couple difficulty options: Standard, where crashing into obstacles causes you to lose 20 points; Zen, where obstacles are eliminated entirely; Hard, which causes crashing into obstacles to be an automatic fail; and Cinematic, which gets rid of all gameplay and just lets you watch your vehicle drive along whichever track you choose. For those that want the rave experience I mentioned earlier, Cinematic mode will probably be your jam. Due to these minor differences, and the fact that they don’t change how any of the songs play like in Guitar Hero or Rock Band, the different difficulties end up largely feeling pointless.
There are 23 songs in the game and a good number of them are just alright. Only about half of them really caught my ear. After doing some research I discovered that the PC version of the game allows you to play songs that are on your computer or from YouTube. This would’ve made the game far better on PS4, but unfortunately it’s a major feature that’s missing from the game, causing the overall package to be lesser as a result.
Music Racer has potential to be something cool, but it’s hampered by simplistic gameplay and poor design choices. It’s something chill to play for a short spurt of time when you don’t feel like playing anything more intense, but it’s not something that’ll keep you invested or coming back for more over and over again.
TheComfySpot 