Super 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 Sports Car Driver)

The generically-titled Super Car Driver, released on Nintendo Switch in 2022, is a game that 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.

(Note: This game shares a lot in common with Sports 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, as well as an odd graphical glitch I noticed in parked cars in the game that has their shadows hovering around them like. Very strange. 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, Super 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.

The game’s missions all seem to take place on and around the same race track and nearby parking areas. In a typical level of the game, you’ll be going through one of various routes through this area, guided in how you’re expecting to navigate by the presence of translucent blue gates.

Unlike Sports Car Driver, you will actually find occasional moments where you can cut loose and put your pedal to the medal here, although those moments are very brief, and you’ll usually find you’ll have more success taking things slow and be careful not to bump into anything, especially with the race track littered with rock-solid traffic cones, barriers, and tires to turn it into an obstacle course. In other words, this game does still definitely lean in favor of the Driving Simulation side of things, so Racing Game fans will likely be disappointed here.

On the other hand, what this game lacks by comparison to Sports Car Driver is that the race track is far less interesting a location than that game’s small but complex city location. Most places here look very samey, meaning that the feeling that you’re just repeating yourself will set in much sooner here than in that game.

Another issue is that this game’s controls 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. Also, this game makes the odd choice to make players manually switch to reverse instead of just making it tied to brake. This can make three-point turns particularly annoying.

And as I noted before, 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 perform figure 8s in parking lots and take labyrinthine routes for no reason. 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.

Finally, this game’s $14 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 $14 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 Super 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 – Super 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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