played a bit of the demo for AGX GP. the wall flipping is cool, and i like how fast the game is. it runs really well too, although it has no graphics options beyond the resolution.

i don't think i'm going to be playing much more of it or actually buying it though. main reason being that the dash makes this game play COMPLETELY different from all the other ones in the genre. for a lot of people that could be a good thing, because it is definitely fresh. i just don't like it. instead of driving along the tracks smoothly with a strafe (f-zero) or air brakes (wipeout) you practically teleport a set amount to the right or left. because of that it kind of feels more like you're zipping across the track than racing across it, and the game seems to REALLY want you to utilize this feature all the time. you're always looking out for how you can cut corners instead of how you can drive them, if that makes sense.

here are two examples of your regular f-zero styled game (blue) versus AGX GP (red). maybe i'm playing the game wrong or something but this FEELS like how you're supposed to play it, especially because the game slows down when you are holding the dash button as if it is really trying to get you to figure out the best routes to take by using it. it doesn't slow you down to dash at all, in fact it speeds you up in a lot of cases. driving a neat line through a curve like on the left is a lot slower than doing the weird dash zig zagging and you can pretty much just spam it.

it seems like i'm not alone in not liking this very much either, taking a glance at the discussions on steam. since so much of the game is built around it, i think it would be kind of hard to just gut it entirely, but if there was a speed penalty for doing it that got exponentially greater the longer you held the button, i think that would go a long way in making the mechanic useful but not so broken that you need to play the game in this fucked up fashion.