Xbox Reviews

Table Top Racing: World Tour Review

Review Table Top Racing: World Tour | Developer Playrise Digital is finally ready to bring Table Top Racing: World Tour for Xbox One, previously launched in May for PS4 with some mixed reviews. What do we get for waiting and playing similar games in the meantime? We get  all downloadable content, Voice support and a few other updates. Sounds like a great deal, right? Let’s find that out in this Table Top Racing: World Tour review!

THE GOOD

  • Visually the game looks very sharp with some funny and well designed tracks and cars.  You don’t have a large selection when it comes to track environments, but all of them are a joy to watch and full with impressive looking objects. It’s not the first, and definitely not the last arcade racer to use the toy cars concept. What’s more important, Table Top Racing uses it in a great way, unlike some other toy car racers on Xbox One.  I can’t explain enough how impressive some effects look, cars all shine and the textures are very detailed, if I’m allowed I could nitpick a little about some cheap looking weapon effects but I totally forgive the developer for that.
  • Career Mode and the coin reward system is pretty well-balanced, like most arcade racers you can upgrade some part of the vehicles, making it go faster or making it more stable in turns. Calling it a RPG-system is a little far-fetched but it kinda works the same. Receiving coins couldn’t be more obvious, win races and tournament and before you know it you maxed out your favorite car. A neat extra is that all tracks have hidden coins, giving you a huge coin boost if you can find them.
  • Developers struggle with providing challenge in most arcade racers but Table Top Racing has a perfect balance between too easy or too hard. You don’t always have to win to advance in the career mode, third place is enough. If you are a perfectionist like me you will battle for that first place, and that my friends is one hell of a challenge! Especially with the luck and randomness from the weapons, bad luck is always an option.. the rival behind you can always get a well-timed rocket or ice blast. What that means for you? You’ll be cursing and throwing away controllers for going from first place to last!
  • Hectic and frustratingly fun online game modes will give the game some extra gameplay fun. As always it remains to be seen if the game has enough online players but so far I could always find a match. I can’t say this enough because many gamers forget it but be sure to use Xbox One’s LFG feature, with this you can still find players for this game in 2020.
  • Thumbs up for the music selection, you will always have the issue that music becomes repetitive after a few hours but I must say that I absolutely loved all music tracks.  Sound effects are pretty good too!

Mixed Feelings

  • Car physics are hit and miss for me, it feels great to steer the cars with high-speed around turns but when you actually hit another car things go south. Be prepared to hit restart frequently when a car manages to hit you from behind or on the side, you lose all control and will probably crash in the wall.
  • It feels a little bit too safe, I’m not saying they should reinvent the wheel but nothing really feels new or fresh. That’s not a bad thing per se, but it would have been fun to see a risky feature or an effort to lift the genre into something new.  I feel that they tried that with the wheels feature, but it didn’t really push the boundaries enough. To explain that wheel feature, you can buy new kind of wheels that give cars special combat abilities, the cool thing is that these upgrades are transferable.  (they are expensive though!)

THE BAD

  • An arcade racer like Table Top Racing should always have local multiplayer, no excuses. Softening the blow is the great online multiplayer but it remains a big disappointment that I couldn’t play this game with my girlfriend or friends that don’t have an Xbox console at home.

Score: 78% | Table Top Racing: World Tour is a fun, challenging toy car racer that plays it a little too safe. the lack of local multiplayer is very odd but the online modes almost make up for it.

 

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