Racing games, particularly arcade racing games, have come a long way. Especially in recent years, racers have been the centerpieces of a gaming tech reveal. Developers pride themselves on how meticulously each car was added to the game. The racing genre is also regularly used as a graphical benchmark. If you don’t want perfection and want to go back to the days of old when racing games were great turn-your-brain-off fun, like old PS2-era racers, Tokyo Xtreme Racer by Genki is returning after 18 years to fill that void.
While the release of Tokyo Xtreme Racer is an early-access release, the story aspect is still prevalent in what is currently available. You are the new driver pulling up to future Tokyo, to take on the other racers who’ve called the Shuto Expressway home. It’s your calling to become the greatest street racer in Tokyo and slowly take out the other gangs taking the streets. All the tools you need are yourself, your skills, your machine (car), and your willpower.
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Now, it’s clear right off the jump how much Tokyo Xtreme Racer takes itself seriously.
For an arcade racer, the amount of edge that’s gone into the writing, you can’t help but laugh at it. And calling cars “machines” is icing on the cake. Take some lines that pop up while the narrator lays out what’s about to happen as you prepare to face a gang leader, for example. “Whose presence awakens the souls submerged in darkness” is an early line that appears with a shaky text shadow underneath it.
Having this be how the story is told, through xtremely edgy text on screen, is hilarious. And each text screen (several of them flash on screen per cutscene) tries to one-up the last with how these “souls of darkness” are trying to conquer the other. Are they motifs for the racing only happening at night in this game? Is this a way to tie the story to its unique racing mechanic? Or are the writers trying to take some of the funniest, most common parts of anime and manga and translate those into a racing game?
It’s hard to tell what’s currently available for all three questions. But they do provide a relief from the monotony of the gameplay itself. For the most part, the racing aspect is… fine. You’re repeatedly racing most of the cars on the same highway while driving around, trying to find your next target.
For a significant portion of Tokyo Xtreme Racer, you’ll drive around the Shuho Expressway to find members of different racing gangs.
You can drive as much as you want, with the only limiting factor being your tire’s life. Once the tires wear out, driving becomes exponentially more difficult. Tires serve as a good break from the game, telling you, “Okay, take a step back.” You’ve driven enough for now. Just a great reminder to not get burnt out.
Once you want to race, you pull behind a car and flash your lights. That immediately triggers a race right where you are on the expressway. You can race any car on the expressway, a great way to farm money for upgrades and buy new cars. Specific competitors that need to be beaten to advance the story do get highlighted after getting close to them.
But what gets in the way of progress is the exponential difference between car levels. Yes, cars have levels that increase from adding better parts to your car and buying upgrades on the skill tree. The thing is, many upgrades are locked behind, beating specific drivers. And the skill tree gives no hints about where they are. Even worse, driver levels aren’t revealed until the race starts. The differential is more manageable early on in the first portion of the expressway. Later on, though, beating a level 5 driver in a level 4 car is nearly impossible, which sucks because you’re just wasting time and tire life at that point.
On its Steam page, the game clearly states that it is in early access to improve with player feedback and stay true to the core of Tokyo Xtreme Racer. Several updates seem needed to modernize it, at least. One suggestion is to clarify what level cars some are before races and reduce the cost of upgrades and new cars.
After a certain point, once the first three bosses are beaten and the expressway triples in size, the gameplay loop of racing and upgrades comes to a screeching, grinding halt. Refinement is needed and should be changed as early access continues.
In addition to that, the disparity between levels in Tokyo Xtreme Racer and not really knowing what you’re getting into before a race is just plain annoying.
Car levels above yours will straight up beat you right out of the gate. Doesn’t help that the car you’re challenging always starts ahead of you. Without any intervention from the additional traffic or the challenged runs into a pillar, you will most definitely lose. And you just feel hopeless as you see your challenge pull further and further away while you are at max speed.
There is one unique aspect of Tokyo Xtreme Racer that helps it stand out from its competition. Its races are health-based rather than reaching an objective faster. Through Spirit Points (SP), your and your enemy’s willpower to win is displayed. And the race is over when either’s SP runs out. SP is such a novel system that redefines what racing means. Through quality skills (and an almost equally tuned car), rays can go on for a while. You can stay in the race even with low SP as long as you get within 25 meters of your opponent.
Winning races with little SP left felt common. Those victories always rocked as they felt like a skin-of-your-teeth win. Those moments made Tokyo Xtreme Racer stand out and had me coming back for more. It’s a shame that the races tend to feel monotonous pretty quickly.
Tokyo Xtreme Racer is a modern arcade racer, for better or worse. Even with its unique depiction of races with its SP system, and Tokyo highway setting, the monotony quickly sinks in. Regardless, there is the promise of a fun racing game that is reminiscent of PS2-era grunge racing games. That potential can be reached with refinement and by valuing the player’s time.
Tokyo Xtreme Racer early access is available January 23rd on PC.
