AI is not great and on the hardest difficulty they are annoying and aggravating to hell lol If you go too fast the game mechanics for the cars can have you flying when drifting at high speeds its happen to me. Online is dead sadly and hardly anyone playing this.Amazing racing game they did well to homage that throwback classic Arcade racing the announcer sounds really well makes you feel like you are in your own personal arcade.

A fun fluid fast paced arcade racer, great for split-screen with friends and family. Colorful visuals and charachters, each of the latter having a cutscene for beating a tournament with them. Has some vehicle customization and character skins. Bunch of fun modes

It is a fine game for free, but would not recommend getting it if you are a casual racing game player.It is hard to find a good casual racing game, this one has the same problems. The normal difficulty feels more like hard, and hard like extreme.I wish there was a setting between normal and hard. Normal is a bit too easy, mostly first rearly second place, but hard is too hard, getting 7-8 place (from 8).If you can't drift perfectly you are missing the boost, and thereby the speed to be in the front.

Excellent arcade racing game. Did run into a few glitches on one of the maps. Cool it was free or else I never would have paid any attention to an arcade racing game like this. It's been so fun and easy to pick up though it has opened my mind to trying out other similar games. The graphics are fun vector type, and the voice acting is a tad repetitive but gives the few characters a little bit of personality. Love upgrading the cars slowly and unlocking driver outfits just for cosmetic purposes. The Steam controller works well with the game, I have not tried it with a keyboard and mouse. Would recommend if on sale for sure!

Rubberbanding?! Slipstreaming?! Bots cheat?!What are negative reviews talking of? Rubberbanding generally in racing games is the effect of cars getting an advantage like a speed boost once they fall behind. Generally talking about racing game design of all racing games I have played in my life I remember two cases:- racing games where there is no rubber banding so the first car gets into the lead more and more and the pack behind it blocks and rams into each other slowing themselves down. This is the unfun one for me. If I'm part of the pack I have no option to win anymore unless the first car fails decisively, all my skill cannot turn the tide, I'm without any incentive to go on with the race to win unless the first car is driven by a total idiot. And if I'm the ... MoreRubberbanding?! Slipstreaming?! Bots cheat?!What are negative reviews talking of? Rubberbanding generally in racing games is the effect of cars getting an advantage like a speed boost once they fall behind. Generally talking about racing game design of all racing games I have played in my life I remember two cases:- racing games where there is no rubber banding so the first car gets into the lead more and more and the pack behind it blocks and rams into each other slowing themselves down. This is the unfun one for me. If I'm part of the pack I have no option to win anymore unless the first car fails decisively, all my skill cannot turn the tide, I'm without any incentive to go on with the race to win unless the first car is driven by a total idiot. And if I'm the player in the lead I don't feel skilled knowing that I have the advantage of no disturbance unlike the others who must cope with that handicap. I don't know about you, but I don't like winning easily, this just doesn't feel rewarding.- racing games where there is rubber banding like Mario Kart, so players who have made not optimal input earlier on the track still have a chance to win. This is the fun one for me for obvious reasons. You can still make a comeback if you perform well, there is the challenge you can accept testing your skills and if you're skilled enough you'll be rewarded with a sweet win. That's how I like racing games.For me the rubberbanding is not a bad thing but a good thing, a feature of the game which enhances the gameplay experience! In Mario Kart they made the rubberbanding feature by giving players who fell behind get better items. In Hotshot Racing they realized rubberbanding with the slipstream mechanic. Every car has a slipstream behind it, a lack of air due to the car in front having pushed away the air. The slipstream is about 6 car lengths long and gives cars which directly follow the path a speed boost. This is physically correct, so the slipstreaming mechanic even makes the game more realistic! This means, that the pack can be faster together than a single car trying to increase the lead and set off. Grand Tour cycling know slipstreaming, seasonal moving birds know slipstreaming. It's part of the game and this rule is the same for all. Do bots cheat when they use slipstreaming? No, because this mechanic can be used by all in the same way. It's NOT like bots get a speed boost just because they fall behind or because they're bots. They get a speedboost because they use the slipstream which is part of the game and therefore fair.So is the gameplay like that #1 always changes?! Not necessarily, no, even though there is slipstream mechanic, you can set off off the pack and get in the far lead, even on the hardest difficulty setting.Difficulties can be compared to Mario Kart's 50cc 100cc 150cc (cylinder capacity) which gives the cars better motors. I have to say that the first two difficulty settings Normal=50cc and Hard=100cc are like the tutorial for the real game which is Expert mode=150cc. Expert mode feels like the game was designed with this speed in mind, but was too hard to get into from the start so they made slower modes before it.People complain that nothing of your skill matters, but only the last round due to rubber banding. They probably haven't played any one round in Expert mode. I couldn't keep up with the pack on Expert and didn't even reach the last lap before I learned the mechanics of this game better. Knowledge and skill definitely matter very much here!The essential mechanic in this game is drifting. It is made SO good! Feels super good to drift in the cars. Use the handbreak to get into a drift. Or if you turn too much with too much speed you get into a drift. Again, this is realistic. Also every car has different drift parameters where you really notice and feel that this car behaves different and this is enhaces the game experience!Every car can use boost once the meter is filled enough. The boost meter fills with drifting and using slipstream. So using these mechanics is rewarded. Drifting makes you slower slightly since you are basically braking with your rubber tyres (and the handbreak), but you can cut corners better with it, so it has a use of its own besides the boost meter filling. Still drifting is rewarded with boost meter, which makes drifting essentially important in this game. These are simple but ingenious game design choices in my view. Further crashing into the sides of the track is punished by losing boost meter depending on the amount of deceleration of the crash, so there is no exploiting track sides for a better time like in Need For Speed. Again, very clever in my opinion. This game is designed so that playing skillful is the best way to win and this is a big positive in my book. I would write more, but reviews have a limited letter count. Very recommended!

Pros:+ Driving is fun and intuitive+ The tracks are varied even if unmemorableCons:- The online is dead- The AI is awful and can make some races unbearableI only recommend it if you have friends to play it with or if you only seek for some casual and brief offline fun.The AI is the worst part of the game. The rubberbanding is terrible, you'll never get away from your pursuers, which makes it useless to use boosts at any point in the race that isn't the last half of the last lap. During the race, the other cars will act as if you didn't exist, they'll punt you off and execute pit maneuvers on you that'll see you facing the wall. It's infuriating.

Hotshot Racing is a retro-inspired racing game that pays homage to the arcade classics of the '90s, such as Outrun, Daytona USA, and Ridge Racer. The game has a vibrant and charming pixel art style, with 3D tracks that feature various environments and weather effects. It runs smooth and a perfect game for ROG Ally

It's a nice racing game. The graphics and sound are good, and there's decent track variety. It took me a while to get accustomed to the controls, but that might just be my own problem - I seem to be a slow learner when it comes to racing games! It's not flashy or all that unique, but this is overall a pretty solid racer to add to your collection.

The polygonal throwback graphics fly by at 60fps. The action is super tight leveraging slipstreaming to move in a rubberbandy pack. Yes as back in the 90s and early 2000s the campaign is short, but for this time the fun is guaranteed. Buy if you like a blue skies arcade racer. Avoid if you need a 60 hour+ campaign and realistic graphics and physics.

The game is a fun classic arcadey feeling racer. The mechanics take a minute to get used to, but overall, it's an easy game to pick up.It doesn't have a whole lot of interesting game modes, so you'll probably get tired of it relatively quickly, but what is there is good.Most characters are also on the boring side. I wish the devs had really embraced the arcadey weirdness and aimed to make all characters as funny as Viktor.