ACA NEOGEO Over Top

Genre: Isometric Racing

Players: 1, Online Leaderboards

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Review:

Over Top is an Isometric Racing game released in 1996 in arcades, the NEOGEO home console, and NEOGEO CD. This modern release sees the game coming to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch in 2017.

Over Top is seen by many as a spiritual successor to Thrash Rally, which certainly makes sense, as it has the same main issues. Namely, the game is too close to the action and too fast to judge upcoming turns, and there’s a complete lack of multiplayer. In fact, it’s worse this time, because the vehicles are even bigger and the action seems faster. I suppose you can mitigate this some by just playing while looking at the mini-map, but that’s no way to play a Racing game.

It’s a real shame too, because the visual presentation in this game is absolutely gorgeous for a game of its era, using what I suspect are pre-rendered visuals to make for fluid animation as the vehicles spin around on the track. Plus, this game adds extra elements, like changing weather conditions.

This release of the game includes a new “Hi-Score Mode” that challenges players to score as much as they can in one run before seeing a game over screen. There is also a new “Caravan Mode” that does much the same, but with the limit being five minutes. In addition, this release of the game includes both English and Japanese versions, and gives players a decent array of options, including various display options, sound options, challenge modifiers, button mapping, and online leaderboards.

In the end, it’s disheartening that after the issues that Thrash Rally had, SNK went back and created a follow-up that had the exact same problems, and they’re arguably even worse this time. And while the presentation is hugely improved here, that doesn’t make up for the terrible gameplay. Skip this one.

tl;dr – Over Top is an Isometric Racing game that follows up Thrash Rally and improves the visuals tremendously while doing absolutely nothing to address the gameplay issues and even making them worse. In short, these vehicles are too large on-screen and going too fast to turn on time. Plus, no multiplayer. It all adds up to a game that you shouldn’t bother with.

Grade: C-

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