Sports Car Driver

Genre: Driving / Racing Game

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: This game is included in the Speedster’s Collection bundle, along with Car Driver Ultimate and Super Car Driver)

The generically-titled Sports Car Driver is, as you would expect, a game where players drive sports cars. More specifically, this game, released on Nintendo Switch in 2022, has players driving various cars in a Simulation-style game that tasks you with getting through a series of checkpoints and then parking in a designated spot as fast as you can without colliding with too many obstacles or other vehicles.

(Note: This game shares a lot in common with Super Car Driver and Car Driver Ultimate, including all three games having many of the same assets. As such, I have copied my review for both games here, changing it based on what is different between them)

The presentation here is decent but unspectacular, with sufficient 3D visuals that get the job done, but not especially well. There’s plenty of nasty pop-in and repeated slowdown too. Even on the Nintendo Switch, Racing games have demonstrated they’re capable of much more than this. The sound here is sufficient enough at least, though there’s no music to speak of.

As for the gameplay, Sports Car Driver is an odd halfway point between a Driving Simulation and a Racing game. There aren’t any other racers here – your only real enemy is the ticking clock and a damage meter that depletes with each collision. There are other cars on the roads in this game, but they act as obstacles rather than opponents.

The game’s missions all seem to take place within the same seaside city consisting of winding streets worming their way around and through a casino, a few parking garages, and a pier. In a typical level of the game, you’ll be going through one of various routes through the city, guided in how you’re expecting to navigate by the presence of translucent blue gates.

You’ll generally find you’ll have more success in this game’s levels taking things slow and careful not to bump into anything. It will be rare when you’ll find it useful to drive at top speed. As a result, I’d argue that this game definitely leans in favor of the Driving Simulation side of things, so Racing Game fans will likely be disappointed here.

However, what’s likely to disappoint just about everyone are this game’s controls, which are just terrible. Your vehicles’ turning radius is restrictive, the brakes take far too long to kick in, and just overall everything here is far too stiff and clunky to be enjoyable.

What’s more, this game gets extremely repetitive very quickly. Follow the gates through a different path in the same area, then park (or sometimes be told to park in reverse). Wash, rinse, repeat. And what’s even more frustrating is that these routes are often completely arbitrary. You’ll be instructed to drive through a parking garage only to exit out the other side and drive to another parking garage, you’ll be made to perform figure 8s in parking lots. It’s pointless to try to make sense out of the route you’re taking because there usually isn’t any sense to be found, and you’re not looking at a route, just a series of gates.

Another frustrating element here is that the traffic in these levels isn’t scripted, meaning that you could end up getting a worse time in a level simply because the traffic was different in this run than it was in the last one.

Finally, this game’s $13 standard price is a joke, because this doesn’t even feel like a full game. It’s far too repetitive and simple, there’s no multiplayer, and I just cannot see most players enjoying this game for more than a few minutes before putting it down forever. Of course, we all know that $13 price tag is just a placeholder to make the game seem like a really good deal when it frequently goes on sale, but the bottom-of-the-barrel $2 price tag really seems like it should have been this game’s normal price, especially since this developer is re-using assets across multiple games.

In the end, while Sports Car Driver had some potential, it just has far too many problems to be worthwhile. The controls are bad, the graphics aren’t super impressive, the gameplay is repetitive, and the price tag is far too high for what’s on offer. Maybe you’ll enjoy this game just enough to make it worthwhile if you get it on sale for $2, but mostly this is a just going to be a frustrating disappointment.

tl;dr – Sports Car Driver is a game that mixes elements of Driving Simulation and Racing games, with a focus mainly on the Driving Simulation side of things. Unfortunately, the cars here do not handle well, the game is highly repetitive, and it is far too lacking in options and contents for its price.

Grade: D+

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