AiRace Xeno

Genre: Arcade Racing / Flight Simulator

Players: 1

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Review:

AiRace Xeno is an Arcade-style Racing game and Flight Simulator released on the Nintendo 3DS in 2014. Like AiRace Speed before it, this game is not a successor to the superb AiRace, but rather to its inferior sibling, AiRace: Tunnel. Like that game, AiRace Xeno restricts players to courses consisting mostly of linear tunnels, although Xeno makes things at least a bit more interesting with oddly-shaped alien-looking courses.

The presentation here is very good, with some detailed 3D visuals depicting these interesting and otherworldly courses, and maintaining a steady framerate and a really good feeling of speed. This is backed by an energetic but forgettable techno-style soundtrack.

Once again, my complaints about every game in this series other than the original AiRace remain here – this is a fairly simple and repetitive game that plays out like an obstacle course, and it just doesn’t have the fun and creative level design that AiRace did. Though at least this time I give the game some credit for making its levels visually interesting with some really cool-looking geometry.

If you’re looking for a fast-paced distraction on your Nintendo 3DS, AiRace Xeno is still a fun game, if a bit shallow. It’s just unfortunate that this series keeps insisting on revisiting the lackluster formula of AiRace: Tunnel instead of the far better original AiRace.

tl;dr – AiRace Xeno is a simple, Arcade-style Racing Game and Flight Simulator that follows in the footsteps of AiRace: Tunnel, featuring similarly repetitive gameplay, although at least this time the courses are visually interesting. This is still an enjoyable game in short sessions, but it’s a far cry from the greatness of the original AiRace.

Grade: C+

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