Pocket Circuit

Genre: Racing

Players: 1

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Review:

Pocket Circuit is a Racing Game released on Nintendo Switch in 2020. This isn’t quite a Top-Down Racing Game, as it takes a viewpoint above and behind your vehicle looking down at the course from an angle, but the gameplay has a lot in common with that style of game.

The presentation here is pretty terrible, using extremely simple 3D visuals that are almost voxel-like, but I feel like that would at least have a sort of charm to it that’s not present here. This is backed by extremely repetitive energetic music that persists through both the menus and gameplay. Other than this, the game has hardly any sound at all.

Before getting to the gameplay, I should note that this game’s menus are a mess. You select your course and car from the main menu screen before going into a race, and racing on a different course means that you have to exit out of the race menu to go back to the main menu first. It’s absurd and counter-intuitive. Oh yes, and the menus evoke mobile games as well.

However, the real inexplicable mess here is the gameplay. Vehicles drive through each other with no collision, vehicles take forever to gain speed, there’s no reverse (after hitting an obstacle, you have to wait a second or two for the game to warp you back into position), and AI vehicles move in an odd, unnatural way. This would be a pretty terrible Racing Game already, but I haven’t even gotten to the worst part.

This game is constantly trying to wrest control away from the player. Whenever you leave the steering controls alone for even the briefest of moments, the game forces your vehicle to change direction so it is facing exactly the same way as the road you’re on. If you’re setting yourself up for an upcoming turn, this can be disastrous, causing you to unexpectedly over-correct and steer directly into a wall, which will of course mean waiting a few seconds for the aforementioned teleport.

What an absolute wreck of a Racing Game Pocket Circuit is. This game has absolutely nothing going for it. It looks ugly, sounds annoying, has terrible gameplay, and even worse controls. You have so many better options for Racing Games on Nintendo Switch, do not buy this.

tl;dr – Pocket Circuit is a Racing Game that plays in a manner similar to Top-Down Racing gams, though it isn’t technically Top-Down. However, this distinction hardly matters because no matter what it is, Pocket Circuit is absolutely terrible. Ugly visuals, annoying sound, bad menu design, bad game design, and controls that try to fight you as you attempt to steer your vehicle. Do not play this terrible Racing Game.

Grade: F

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