If you're looking for a cheap, fast racing game this is going to be up your alley. Provided you have a Switch 2, of course. The music is great, the tracks are fun, but the graphics suffer due to the developer's insistence on packing in as much useless crap in as they can and letting DLSS do the rest. There is a "pure" mode that runs the game at a dynamic 1440p resolution, but it removes anti-aliasing. The resulting image is still a mess, but at the very least it doesn't have the extreme DLSS artifacts that the other modes do.

I was also a little bit disappointed in the jump mechanic. It's useful for very defined shortcuts, but I feel like they could have done a lot more with it. It is great that you can use it anywhere you want, but there are specific places you are meant to use it with the game punishing you for more creative uses. This feels particularly bad when compared to games like Aero GPX where, although you can't jump on command, you can take routes that let you soar through the air and use deeper mechanics to gain massive amounts of speed.

There is also no online play, so it's going to just be bot matches or local split screen. Don't even think about using game share to play this. The bots, as is par for the course in many racing games, have ridiculous rubber banding. You know it's bad when you're in the vehicle with the highest top speed, taking the perfect lines, and the bot racer shoots ahead of you only to slow down just before the finish line. It just feels too manufactured.

The new Fusion mode is kind of an interesting concept, but to be honest it feels more like a gimmick than anything else. All it takes is one look online to see what the best vehicles are so you shoot for those. They're the best by a long shot. Getting any of the others feels really tedious, and instead of sticking around as options to play as you have to go around unfusing and fusing all these vehicles together. Not even in multiplayer are you able to play from your total selection of fusions, just the ones you currently have. It feels simultaneously over and under cooked. I would have vastly preferred to have just some more vehicle designs without the fuse mechanic.

Altogether, this game does feel a little bit on the lower end of the Fast franchise. It feels apparent to me that they tried to get it out for the launch of the Switch 2 because, with their aggressive pricing, they knew it would sell well. For the price, I actually do think this game is 100% worth it. The core racing gameplay is still just as good as it always has been. Just don't expect anything too robust and take it for what it is.

#beardgamereview