PixlBit

I jumped into AiRace Speed without much prior knowledge of the game. From its eShop presentation, it seemed to have F-Zero written all over it. As a closet racing game fan, I couldn’t help but get excited. After a few minutes playing, it was clear that the developers managed to capture the speed – and the sadistic difficulty – of F-Zero but not much of the fun. Perhaps it’s because the tracks are devoid of racers or the fact that I never had a perfect handle on the ship, but after a few hours grinding away in these races, I never want to look at AiRace Speed again.

Featuring eighteen tracks, AiRace Speed is primarily a race against time. Rather than being anchored to the ground, your craft has free movement within the tunnels and rooms that comprise each course. Perhaps an obscure reference, but if you can remember the segments in StarFox where you need to navigate and bank your craft in the tunnels heading towards a boss, you should have a pretty clear picture of what AiRace Speed is offering. Well, almost.

The “speed” part of the title is pretty apt, because you’ll need to accelerate to a rate faster than you can react to track hazards in order to nab a gold medal in each course. Impediments within the tunnels tend to appear very quickly and while going very fast, you have very limited mobility. In other words, you’re going to crash. A lot. Personally, I found it pretty annoying. Sure, your timer is turned back to the time you had upon crossing a checkpoint, but the three second penalties start to really add up, sinking your opportunity for a gold medal pretty quickly if you make a few mistakes.

After failing horribly a few times, I decided to change my strategy and take it pretty slow. I managed to eke out a few silver medals and overall it was a lot less frustrating and I felt like I had a much greater degree of control. Unfortunately, that’s not the way the game is meant to be played. So upon hitting a progression wall, I had to ramp things back up to continue unlocking courses.

A few of the tracks in the game are actually “endless,” forcing you to reach a given distance to grab hold of a given medal. With only three lives at your disposal, these are not easy and can become a tedious grind that you must trudge through as many times as necessary to get a gold medal.

The overarching theme with AiRace Speed for me was frustration. I know it might sound like I’m just terrible at the game, and maybe I am, but I did manage to procure nearly all gold medals eventually. I just didn’t have an ounce of fun doing it. Quite frankly, if I didn’t have to prepare this review, I would’ve put the game down almost immediately. Sure, it only rings up at $4.99 and it looks pretty, but AiRace Speed is not a game I recommend.