Fast Racing Neo Review

[Zera]

The Future is Fast.

Introduction: Greetings, folks. This is my review of Fast Racing Neo, a futuristic racer developed by Shin'en Multimedia. It released as a Wii U eShop exclusive on December 10, 2015, and costs 15 US Dollars. Shin'en, a small third party developer from Germany, has made games for Nintendo consoles for more than 15 years and has a penchant for impressive graphics and solid gameplay. Fast Racing Neo is the sequel to their 2011 WiiWare title, Fast Racing League.

Graphics: Despite being an eShop game made by about five people, Fast Racing Neo has some of the most impressive and breathtaking graphics on Wii U. If you want to know how they made everything look amazing, I HIGHLY recommend reading these behind-the-scenes articles from Nintendo Life -
http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2015/11/feature_a_glimpse_behind_the_scenes_of_fast_racing_neo_-_part_one
http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2015/11/feature_a_glimpse_behind_the_scenes_of_fast_racing_neo_-_part_two
http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2015/12/feature_a_glimpse_behind_the_scenes_of_fast_racing_neo_-_part_three
...and watching this analysis video from Digital Foundry - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28E1eRy73l4.
The end result is an eShop title that could be mistaken for a PS4 title. Particles like snow or fiery embers and screen effects like waterfalls and smoke covering the screen add an extra level of immersion, and the beautiful visuals are presented at a smooth 60 frames per second.

Sound: The sound quality is great and the fast racing is accompanied by a suitably futuristic soundtrack.
Fast Racing Neo OST - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3raZthBTzUg&list=PLyob_5iB1lWkT-8ZR1IdzDqzAoIrjBMJi&index=1
A couple tracks are just generic techno or dubstep, but most are quite good, and a few are downright excellent.
Each course has its own music, and there is also an unlockable sound test. Fun fact: Jack Merluzzi, the announcer in F-Zero GX, is also the announcer in this game.

Tracks and Vehicles: The sixteen tracks aren’t as insane as the ones in F-Zero GX, but they’re quite varied in visual as well as mechanical design. You'll race through futuristic cities, snowy mountains, dense jungles, and arid deserts. You’ll boost through icicles, get destroyed by fire geysers, and fly through anti-gravity in space. There are ten cool-looking vehicles, each with a unique combination of top speed, acceleration, and weight (handling), and it's fun to try them all.

Gameplay: Championship is the main mode and is split into four cups that can be played in three literally named leagues - Subsonic, Supersonic, and Hypersonic. Even Subsonic is fast, but in Hypersonic vehicles can travel over 1000 mph, or 1600 kph. If you’re like me and play racing games just for the sense of speed, you definitely won’t be disappointed.

In addition to basic racing controls, you can lean left and right, which is useful for strafing and making slight adjustments. Leaning does not significantly improve your turning though, so you'll need to learn how to steer through the tracks without leaning first. Heavy vehicles have more delayed steering, so if you're having trouble you can just switch to a lighter machine.

Fast Racing Neo has a unique polarity switching mechanic a la Ikaruga - you can toggle the color of your vehicle between orange and blue. When you drive over boost areas, you'll boost if you're the same color; otherwise you’ll slow down. This makes the game more challenging since you have to keep track of more information. Strafing and switching polarities back and forth to use several boost areas in a row can be quite satisfying. With that being said, I would've liked this mechanic even more if the colors of boost areas were random, so you couldn't memorize them and would always have to rely on reflexes.

Tracks also have small orbs you can collect to fill a meter for manual boosting. You can boost into opponents to make them spin out, smash through small obstacles, or maintain speed when you would normally lose it (Ex: During a jump). Boosts do not stack in this game, so boosting manually while using a boost area is wasteful.

Time Trial: There is a Time Trial mode with a staff record to beat for every course and league. This mode is great for practicing the tracks, but it's also good if you just want to race alone or soak in the visuals.

Hero Mode: After Hypersonic, the insanity increases in Hero Mode, which has some unique rules. Your boost meter doubles as a shield meter, and boost areas boost you AND fill your boost meter (So it’s even FASTER than Hypersonic!). This mode is literally “Fast Racing Neo: F-Zero Edition” and is a fun and intense challenge. This is what it looks like - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4eujD0JITQ

Difficulty: Fast Racing Neo is a very challenging game, although it's not as brutal as F-Zero GX. Thankfully, you'll never need to worry about your skillful victories being stolen by a random, unavoidable, badly designed item. (I'm looking at you, Mario Kart.)

Local Multiplayer: Fast Racing Neo has 2-4 person local multiplayer. All controller types are supported, and it can be played in all leagues except Hero Mode. Even in 2-player, the game still runs at 60 fps, but this is reduced to 30 fps for 3-4 players. You can play championships, but you can't select individual tracks, a design choice that baffles me to no end. Still, multiplayer championships is a lot better than nothing.

VIDEO GAME DESIGN 101

The ability to select individual race tracks is THE most important feature of local multiplayer in ANY racing game. There's simply no excuse for lacking this basic feature.This is a truly amateur mistake in an otherwise incredibly well-made game.

Online Multiplayer: There is also 2-8 person online multiplayer, where you can race random players or friends at Subsonic speed. Unfortunately, there aren't championships or ranked races, so there isn't any sense of progression. My experiences with online stability and lag have been very mixed so far, but Shin'en will soon release a patch with stability improvements, among other things. When that patch is out, I'll update this section.

Flaws?: Fast Racing Neo only has one significant flaw and that is a lack of options. In addition to the things I mentioned about multiplayer, there is literally no options menu, so if you want to remap buttons or increase the music volume, you can't do that. There's also no "practice" / "free run" mode, so if you want to drive around a track at hyperspeed ad infinitum until you enter a trance-like state and become one with your machine, you can't do that either. Still, it's difficult to be mad with the large amount of singleplayer content, and the $15 price tag is very cheap for 16 tracks.

Conclusion: Fast Racing Neo is easily the best futuristic racer on Wii U. Of course, it’s the ONLY one, but that's not the point. The point is, if I had a checklist of everything that needs to be in a futuristic racer, Fast Racing Neo checks nearly every box on that list. It looks great, sounds great, plays great, has unique mechanics, varied tracks and vehicles, a great challenge, an incredible sense of speed, and local and online multiplayer. It fills a genre gap on Wii U, raises the bar for eShop games, and is a retail experience for just $15. There are only four kinds of people I don’t think will enjoy this game -

1. Hard games frustrate me. I don't want to lose!
2. I don't want FAST racing, I want SLOW racing. And items... like blue shells.
3. I hate indie developers and/or fun because I am evil.
4. Driving at 1000 mph gives me motion sickness.

- If you don't fit into any of those groups, I think you'll find that Fast Racing Neo is a very polished, very fast, and very fun game, with a great price for its content. Highly recommended, especially if you're already into futuristic racers.

 

9 out of 10 (Awesome!)
+Breathtaking visuals
+Energetic soundtrack
+Sound test
+Smooth controls
+Unique polarity mechanic
+A genuine challenge
+Subsonic is FAST
+Supersonic is FASTER
+Hypersonic is FASTEST
+Hero Mode is FASTEREST
+Time Trial and staff records
+10 unique vehicles
+16 varied tracks
+2-4 person local multiplayer
+2-8 person online multiplayer
+It’s only $15
/No options menu
/Online mode is very basic
-No free run mode
--No individual track selection in local multiplayer?

Edited August 6, 2018 by Zera

[Slyfox]

Good review!

You really keep things easy to read and understand, instead of going all out poetic on us. Just what I think reviews need to accomplish.

[Melissa]

Looks like the closest thing Nintendo has to a Gran Turismo-esque title