SpeedX 3D

Genre: Arcade

Players: 1

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Review:

SpeedX 3D is an Arcade-style game released on Nintendo 3DS in 2012. The premise in this game is pretty simple – the player is constantly moving forward in the first-person perspective, and must try to avoid obstacles.

The presentation here is pretty good for a $4 game, using polygonal 3D graphics depicting a cylindrical corridor that twists and turns, and warps to be a flat plane or even turn inside-out as you speed forward on it, with obstructions taking the form of cubes, columns, and pyramids. I should note that when the corridor warps so you’re no longer enclosed within it, you can see some pretty noticeable pop-in, and there’s some occasional slowdown as well, though not enough to significantly interfere with the gameplay. On the other hand, this game frequently changes the lighting in some fun ways that can make things pretty visually interesting. This is all backed by a decent techno-style soundtrack.

As for the gameplay… well, this is a pretty simple, straightforward game. Just dodge left or right using the circle pad (or gyroscopic motion control, but this method of control is pretty bad), look for patches that can give you a shield to survive more minor collisions, and otherwise just try to avoid everything as best you can, something that is absurdly easy for a long while before the game’s difficulty finally picks up. The game does try to shake things up every now and then by adding new types of obstacles, as well as effects that mess with your visuals or controls, but otherwise this is just… well, a simple game.

There are a few different game modes, but they all seem to amount to the same basic idea – either you’re avoiding obstacles for a certain amount of time, or doing so for an endless amount of time. The one exception here is Zones mode, which has you not only dodging obstacles, but frantically searching for spaces that refuel your constantly-dwindling fuel. I didn’t find this mode especially fun, but I give it credit for at least being different.

Okay, so overall, is SpeedX 3D worth $4? Eh, I dunno. I feel like this is the sort of game you might download to your smartphone to play to kill time, not the sort of thing you’d want to play on a dedicated gaming device. However, it’s not a bad game, just a simple and unspectacular one. I leave it to you to decide if that sounds like it’s worth $4 to you.

tl;dr – SpeedX 3D is an Arcade-style game where the player is constantly moving forward in the first-person perspective in a twisting corridor, and must try to avoid obstacles. This is a simple, straightforward game. It is by no means terrible, but it’s largely unspectacular.

Grade: C

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