Speed Kills Review (PC)

Speed Kills is an isometric arcade racing game that, at first glance, scratches an itch that hasn't been scratched in a while.

Its top-down perspective and vehicular combat elements hail from a long-lost time, when Death Rally used to be all the rage, and racing titles like Carmageddon got players more worried about how to pull off daring stunts than how to achieve steering perfection around every turn.

The game also has a distinct sci-fi vibe, with all the races taking place in decrepit urban settings from distant planets, with the derelict remains of civilization popping up in the background, in-between endless backdrops of rock, jungle, desert, ice or extensive metropolises.

You start out in a second-hand league on a dustbowl planet with nothing but your trusty monster truck, and you gradually make your way to the big-league circuits, where the real money is, but also the most cutthroat competition that the galaxy can muster.

As such, you slowly grind your way through the gutter, milking the first circuit dry before moving to the next league and buying a new sportscar, gradually upgrading your racecar and improving your standing until you begin to dominate every championship, milking this circuit dry before moving to the next one and buying a coveted hovercraft and so on and so forth.

Desert planets are known for their racing tradition

That huge bling may slow me down but it looks rad on camera

Each of the vehicles you can purchase has a different combination of weaponry and statistics, and it's up to you to choose your preferred ride and then speed down the winding tracks in the race to the finish.

The premise is really good, and Speed Kills sounds very promising on paper, but the unfortunate reality is that the actual experience does not live up to expectations.

You can't choose what to upgrade, you simply buy a better engine that automatically adds to either acceleration or top speed, and the only other options are larger weapon inventory and better armor, which are useful, as more armor can keep you from dying from a single rocket or mine but only marginally add to your actual racing prowess.

Another disappointing thing is that you can't improve maneuverability in any way, you are simply stuck with whatever turn speed the base car has, which makes things a bit hit-and-miss when it comes to buying new cars.

That, however, isn't such a big problem, as there aren't too many options anyway, and you'll usually go with whatever it is that you can afford, without much pondering.

The races themselves are fun, because they're fast and you can shoot other contestants, not to mention get various power-ups that can have a dramatic impact on the final outcome, making things pretty exciting, but, unfortunately, the controls are too simplistic, there is no incentive to lift your finger off the acceleration key, as the gain in maneuverability is quickly offset by the generally low ramp-up time of the engine, struggling to regain your former speed.

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In addition to this, there are many instances in which you'll simply be knocked over by your opponents without having much say in the manner, in a way that's as mysterious as magnets. How do they work?

There is no clear physics engine interaction that you can consistently employ on your opponents, it's simply a hit-or-miss scenario where sometimes you'll knock an opponent into the railing, and sometimes you'll just feel like you're huddling together for warmth.

This, along with the fact that lateral collisions with the edges of the track will not usually put a big dent in your cruising speed, and sometimes nor will frontal ones, in order to keep the arcade feel intact, will make Speed Kills look a bit random, at times.

You'll get slowed to a halt when colliding with some unseen obstacles on the railing, without any clear form of identification that would allow you to steer clear of them, and your opponents will topple you over and make you face the other way with any kind of collision sometimes, causing an immense amount of frustration, as it will usually make you lose.

There isn't a whole lot you can do to recoup once you've lost an initial advantage. The power-ups are placed right in the middle of the lane, in the same positions over and over, and if you get a good start, you'll pick them all up and never see any of the competitors until the race is over.

If you get thrown into a wall without really knowing why, even when a sportscar rams your monster truck, you might end up losing without having any way to do something about it. Your adversaries do battle among themselves, but that is rarely conducive to anything more than someone getting shot and having to respawn, which will give you a couple of seconds to catch up, in case you were lucky enough to find some power-ups on your way in order to blow them apart so you can overtake them.

The weapons are also very limited in both scope and efficiency, as any slight elevation difference in terrain makes you miss your mark, and you can't install your weapons of choice on just any vehicle you want.

The colorful description is nice, but what about a map?

Blurrier than a Sunday morning

Not showing enough of the racing track becomes even more encumbering when you take into account the fact that there is no map of any of the tracks, not even in the menus for you to check out beforehand.

Developers Holy Warp and Black Wing Foundation built the game on Unreal Engine 4, so it has some nice visuals, especially for its scope, with a ton of motion blur when you activate speed boosts and an overall satisfying level of detail as far as the tracks go.

The game was initially released for tablets, and it kind of shows, as it's pretty limited in scope and although visually pleasing, it is not planning to ride on graphics alone. The models and tracks are pretty low-poly and there is no debris on the tracks, nothing to collide with, no exciting relief whatsoever, except for a couple of ramps.

The music sounds a bit generic, but it's the right kind to get some fuel pumping during races, with nasty guitar riffs and powerful drums driving the action, an overall good fit for a racing game, even though a tad repetitive.

The Good

The Bad

Conclusion