Ever played a racing game that focuses exclusively on the racing aspect and avoids any unnecessary gimmicks or micro-transactions, and respects its roots to the T? I am not sure about you but for me, Tokyo Xtreme Racer fits that bill, a game I have been playing a lot over the last few days. For those who are unaware, the Tokyo Extreme series has been around for almost three decades and primarily focuses on night-time street racing on Tokyo’s Shuto Expressway. Its Japanese title literally translates to “Metropolitan Expressway Battle”, an indication that you have go to head-to-head against your rivals and defeat them by either damaging their car or taking a substantial lead over them.
The gameplay in Tokyo Xtreme Racer is extremely straight forward. Featuring a battle system called as “Spirit Battle”, you need to wipe out your opponent’s health by luring them into making a mistake, crash into them or overtake them and extend the lead over a certain distance. Initial races in the game are 1v1 encounters which begin by getting behind your rivals and flashing your headlight. As noted previously, this gameplay mechanic is simple but extremely addictive at the same time.
"Featuring a battle system called as “Spirit Battle”, you need to wipe out your opponent’s health by luring them into making a mistake, crash into them or overtake them and extend the lead over a certain distance."
Taking place in a map which is stretched across 180kms of Shuto Expressway, there are plenty of rivals that you can face-off against, each with varying levels of competence and AI behaviors. This can result into races that can be completed within seconds or some that could last several minutes resulting into a challenging, mouse and cat like experience. You could easily crash into barriers or into ongoing traffic, thereby losing the lead and thereby the match. In fact, your competitor AI can also make the same mistakes and give away the lead to you. It’s this unpredictable system that makes racing in Tokyo Xtreme Racer a blast.
At its core, Tokyo Xtreme Racer is an arcade experience, but it’s backed up by some engaging progression mechanics. As you race and win more duels, you will be awarded with skill points which can be used to unlock more vehicles, garage space, new parts and even improve attack and defense parameters of the vehicle. While most of these addons like unlocking parts or increasing vehicle stats make sense in the context of a racing game, some of the stuff like limiting capacity to earn money behind certain skill barriers is absurd. If you do not upgrade this skill type, you will not be able to earn any more money beyond a certain point. You would need to continuously upgrade that skill type so that you do not lose your race credits. It’s a weird mechanic that makes no sense at all, and I question and wonder about the logic behind such a system.
Tokyo Xtreme Racer also allows you to buy new vehicle parts and even adjust several settings of your vehicle. It’s not as detailed as say something like Gran Turismo 7, but it’s an option for players who want to control some of the finer settings of the vehicles. You can also customize various sections of the vehicles like bumpers and tyres with new cosmetic fittings. Want a cool neon light coming out from all the sides of your vehicle? The game has you covered. All in all, despite being an arcade game, Tokyo Xtreme Racer surprisingly had an in-depth progression and customization mechanic.
"Tokyo Xtreme Racer also allows you to buy new vehicle parts and even adjust several settings of your vehicle."
Tokyo Xtreme Racer also features a story that is told through unvoiced text lines and basic imagery. However, this was one of the least interesting parts of the experience as the game makes no effort in engrossing the player in its plot. It’s so basic that the game would be completely fine without it. Hopefully, more will be revealed about the story in the final version, but as it stands now, I found its inclusion to be quite worthless.
As noted earlier, Tokyo Xtreme Racer features 180 kilometers worth of the Shuto Expressway to race upon. The map is divided into ramps, and they can be unlocked once you pass through them. However, the game implements a rather inconsistent fast travel system. Once you unlock a ramp, you can only fast travel to it by going through the garage. However, when you are on the track, you cannot fast travel to any ramps of your choice. This made mission completion a tedious endeavor as each rival is located in a different area of the map. So, you have to either drive to reach there (mind you, some of the locations are quite far away) or quit and go back to garage and fast travel to nearest ramp.
Another fundamental design flaw is that the game’s map lacks intermediate diversions. Assume that you are on one side of the road and want to make your way on to the opposing side. You have two ways to do this and both of them are tedious. You can go back to garage and fast travel to the nearest ramp or just travel to a diversion that will likely be miles away from your current location. In a racer that is focused on fast and quick action, these weird design choices deter it from reaching its full potential. Hopefully, these obstructions will be removed or redesigned in the final release. In its current, they merely serve to artificially increase the gameplay time.
In its early access release, Tokyo Xtreme Racer features only a handful of soundtracks. They get the job done and jibe well with the action but hopefully the list will be expanded upon with future updates. Visually, the game is going for a unique but a nostalgic art style that is reminiscent of the PlayStation 2 era. After all, not every game has to be a Forza or a Gran Turismo in terms of graphics. The Tokyo Xtreme Racer series has always had its own identity, its own look and feel, and I am glad it sticks to that. The game is also pretty light on PC requirements, and I was able to run at a stable 60fps with every setting maxed out at 4K resolution.
As noted earlier, Tokyo Xtreme Racer’s gameplay is based on draining your opponent’s health bar. However, when cars crash into each other, there is no visual damage indicator. There is no need for complex damage physics like the ones seen in the F1 games, but at least static damage marks and destruction vfx effects should have been implemented. This is a little detail, but something that will make the racing even more immersive.
"In its early access release, Tokyo Xtreme Racer features only a handful of soundtracks."
Tokyo Xtreme Racer, according to the developer, will be in early access for four months, so, hopefully, the team will be able to aforementioned issues through updates. At the time of writing this review, I haven’t been able to find a roadmap for the game, so it’s difficult ascertain what kind of updates are coming in the future.
So, the current state of the early access version of Tokyo Xtreme Racer is largely satisfying. There are a few design issues in terms of map layout, fast travel and locking max currency limit behind multiple skill barriers, but there is a lot to like here. The sense of speed, the visuals and performance, the simple yet addictive gameplay and its adherence to the series’ roots is what makes Tokyo Xtreme Racer standout from the competition.
This early access version of the game was reviewed on PC.
