Top Speed: Drag & Fast Racing

Genre: Drag Racing

Players: 1

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Review:

Top Speed: Drag & Fast Racing is a Drag Racing game originally released on mobile devices in 2015 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2020. With this being a Drag Racing game, players aren’t steering at all, and don’t even have the option of viewing races from behind the wheel – instead, they get a side view with an HUD representing their car’s dash as they control the acceleration and gearshift.

Visually, this game doesn’t look terrible, but it doesn’t look great. The cars themselves look okay, but have a complete lack of personality. In fact, much the same could be said for the rest of the presentation here, which uses forgettable anime-style still frame art for its characters, and a similarly forgettable soundtrack.

The gameplay is, I suppose, fine for what it’s aiming for, but there’s not really much to it. Keep your metaphorical foot on the gas pedal and shift when the RPM gauge is in a designated area, pressing the “turbo” button when it pops up. Honestly, it’s kinda’ sad that this game turns something as exciting as high-speed racing into something so boring.

Even beyond the lackluster gameplay, there’s some other problems under the hood here as well. This game’s mobile roots are clearly evident in the lack of effort put into the port of this game, with the game moving a giant arrow cursor over buttons clearly designed for a touchscreen interface (a cursor that remains even after selecting an option). I suppose I can credit the game’s touchscreen controls for being much better than the traditional controls, but that’s only because that’s what this game was clearly designed for in the first place, and they didn’t remove it or screw it up too much in the transition. Ugh, they couldn’t even be bothered to assign the “gas” control to the ZR trigger, instead putting that control on the R button instead! Oh, and of course there’s no multiplayer…

I could go on, but why bother? I do not like Top Speed: Drag & Fast Racing. It is a lazy port of an underwhelming game that takes the fun out of high-speed racing. It’s a simple game with shoddy design and underwhelming visuals. And while it does technically succeed at what it’s aiming for, what it’s aiming for is so low that one wonders why anyone would feel the need to aim for that in the first place. I bought this game on sale for $1 and felt cheated. Don’t make the same mistake as me.

tl;dr – Top Speed: Drag & Fast Racing is a Drag Racing game that’s simple to the point of boredom, and on top of that it’s a shoddy port of a 5 year-old mobile game. Don’t waste your time with this.

Grade: D

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