Ultimate Racing 2d Switch Review

[Bran Bast]

Firstthings first, racing games are my thing. I play a staggering amount of Gran Turismo 7 and F1 24 (at the moment, anyways, until F1 25 comes out next year), so when the opportunity to look at Hot Lap Racing came along, I decided to take it on to see what an arcade-style racing game is like in 2024.

Hot Lap Racing allows you to start your driver career with either the Tutorial & Championship training or the Bernier Challenge to achieve your initial racing licence. I chose to do the Tutorial & Championship because it gave me a better opportunity to learn the controls and how the cars handle.

Once I completed the tutorial and championship, I was able to start my career properly. The career takes approximately 9-11 hours, depending on your skill level behind the wheel, and takes you through multiple championships, driving a series of different cars against AI opponents. I had no idea the warzone that awaited me as I took on the first few events.

Speaking of tracks, there are over 15 different tracks to race on, offering over 70 different layouts! There is a mixture of Licensed and Custom tracks, like the Salzburgring in Austria, Oschersleben in Germany, and more. My favourite part of racing is learning tracks, especially with real-life tracks, so this is a fun experience on some tracks I was completely unfamiliar with.

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UR2D is packed with 45 tracks from all disciplines of racing. There are multiple ovals for those who only want to turn left and well-crafted road circuits that do a good job of representing their real-world counterparts are included for Formula One fans. For me, the kart circuits, with their constant hairpins and s-curves, were the most enjoyable, especially when using car classes with looser handling.

When it comes to racing games, developers must choose between going with arcade physics or realistic driving characteristics. I believe UR2D wants to be a realistic racer where practicing each track to learn the perfect groove, braking points, and turn entry and exit all make for a faster lap time. There are moments where you see this realism executed during a race but as soon as you bounce your car off a wall or ping pong between a couple of the AI drivers that sense of realism vanishes. What you end up with is a mash-up of both styles that I could never get the hang of.

At first, I thought I could overcome the issues of weak AI and lack of car setup options by practicing on the very well-made tracks until I had them memorized. The longer I played, though, the more I came to the realization that I would never be able to run a perfect race. Even if I could get off to a good start, all it would take was one bump from an AI opponent to send me to the back of the pack.

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Hot Lap Racing is too serious to be an arcade racer and its handling is too loose to be considered a serious simulation, but players looking for something that attempts to straddle a middle ground will get a kick out of its unique roster of cars and its dedication to the history of racing, despite its performance issues.

Cheers for the review. The move towards a sim style game is interesting. This makes it different from the variety of racers on the Switch. The handling aspect of things may bite as you are pitting various types of cars against eachother but it still sounds enjoyable. One for a slight sale though as I am navigating a downloaded sea of games.

@Arkham24601 having realistic gas pedal depression does not make something a proper racing game. Video games are representations, not direct correlations with things in real life. That's like me saying any game with a sword not on switch or Wii isn't the proper sword game because you can't use motion controls to swing it.

@anoyonmus Grid runs well on Switch. Don't have it installed right now, but, IIRC, it has a "performance" mode that gets you close enough to 60fps. Fun fact: it's one of the few games with dedicated support for the GameCube controller's analog triggers.

5/10, the MC score I gave shovelware Dodge Charger Vs Challenger on Wii had 2 side modes & average progression/controls/polish for an ad game, Ford Racing challenges, Alfa Romeo rewind feature before Grid/Forza 3.

The tracks do look lifeless. Even if not people, no fantasy trees or quirks on the sides on on the track. Even GT series had the Loch Ness Monster in Trial Mountain or other fun details. Grand Canyon people. Others maybe balloons or interesting TV screen features. Indie or not they could try some details even with their fair budget/artstyle (which is fine) but lacking personality on the tracks is unfortunate.

The 'we are trying to compete with Grid' is fine (not a bad thing, fine with) but to me in a bland way, modes or progression. When playing WRC 3 on 360 has many event types besides the typical ones, found gate ones fun & the combo ones later a challenge, or PGR has kudos flashy driving (car dealership/garages, Geometry Wars), Forza challenges/autocross/drag/hillclimbs. Why do 8th+ gen games suck. Project Cars 3 sucked & it still had point gate events & typical races even if progression sucked.

Racing games 8th gen+ are soulless when we used to have 'mechanics' & modes with more exciting ideas, now it's business models & safe. Rewind was in 2006 by a advertising game (Milestone innovated regardless of ad/other games), then Grid, then Forza Motorsport 3 and the same ever since.

Nostalgia ones exist.... Indies are trying. Touge/Hillclimbs don't even exist in games anymore. Pink slips? Anything? Nope. Fair game I think but the lack of doing anything to compete other than the focus licenses & classes, but no fun modes is what stops me from wanting this title.

So many racing games are just bland with no exciting modes anymore just racing, time trial & drift, and oh licensed cars. Wreckfest has no licenses, no Flatout driver flinging events, but it had sofa, lawnmower & bus events were fair besides derbies or racing & fair track layouts. It's ok but better than others at being a modern game that was crowdfunded. Wrecreation hoping too.

Part 2:

It fills a space on Switch but R Racing Evolution, GT Cube/Pro Series, Auto Modellista, & more on GameCube. RIMs for a bike game is probably fair. As bad as it is, terrain ideas for Motorcycle Club was cool (even though it's times were hard to beat, the limited bikes didn't bother me but progression did, I own that game because it's a 1.0 disk & because of it's ideas, not because I like it).

Gear Club Unlimited 2 wasn't much but it's few modes were fair, it's structure was fair, it was arcade for sure and the Tracks DLC tried to compete I guess but both DLCs have differences that I think are fair from the base game's systems.

It's like Diofield Chronicle, fair ideas but Valkyria Chronciles 4 came out in 2018 & has more depth in mission variety as goals, sure a boss/regular enemy and a parachute bomb or a ship turret or tanks or the map layout isn't much but some get to here or do this & that in fair scenarios. May be different but 'focus on story' with only 2 character restricted missions as the 'gameplay highlight', rest repetitive & whatever story showed some devs are lazy, do the bare minimum & can't think up exciting ideas.

Distance, Art of Rally and Interial Drift, Horizon Chase Turbo have been cool but otherwise many seem to be oh were Virtua Racing, Outrun, Sega Rally, Micro Machines and I'm like nah pass. I don't seek nostaglia I seek game design and that seems to not happen because people are too emotional/inspired/nostalgic and making successors but really unexciting ones. There is filling in a space and making an interesting distinct game even if inspired. I want interesting in the racing genre and I haven't found it yet.

I mess around with music or just making up my own Power Points for games based on ideas, not fan game or fan music level nonsense. I get ideas and design concepts just for fun. No different to seeing Foamstars and going foam, what can be done with that in cool ways yet that came made it as sad as possible as a business model first game and surfboards only for defeating enemies, no races, nothing else exciting. Where are maps that do things, like a shipyard with moving cranes/platforms, a being a bug size, mostly platformers or Grounded have done that, but others could in their own way, in different locals for object scale.

I'm a bit critical but it's because the competition I felt of ideas was better in the past. Samew ith No Man's Sky/Nightinggale from veterans making a survival game for the first time, ambitioushard to make structures/features.

I don't expect Indies to go that far as it's tough but at least some fair different mode (at least one, or make it a different type of game even if involves cars) in a racing game or fake cars would be nice.

@anoyonmus Grid Autosport (like all Feral's work) is a great port, and they added lots of nice quality-of-life features for Switch, like a million controller options and a performance graphics mode to get it running over 30fps. It's the best serious racer on the console for sure.

@anoyonmus It's definitely worth getting if you're into racing games. The graphics are decent, and I haven't had any issues with it running poorly. I'd say watch a few reviews first, and if you like what you see, go for it!

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