People of a certain age fondly remember top-down racing games like Micro Machines, Super Off Road, or the spectacular four-player Hot Rod arcade cabinet. Without Atari’s pioneering racer Sprint 2, they might not have existed–and after 38 years, the company hopes to recapture this magic with spiritual successor NeoSprint.
There’s a huge gap in the market for a definitive, modern retro-style racing game like this. Despite its charming, no-frills concept, NeoSprint limps past the chequered flag. It could be a strong, fun, multiplayer-focused racing experience, and it has its moments. Still, it’s hamstrung by nearly-there ideas, odd design decisions, skill-free core driving mechanics, and poor AI.
As a result, NeoSprint doesn’t just make you question if its forerunners were only good for their era–it might make you wonder if these games of yesteryear were any fun in the first place.
NeoSprint makes a nice first impression, at the very least. Its straightforward, colorful approach integrates plenty of Atari’s modern hallmarks, not least the not-so-subtle but relatively random inclusion of classic games–Pong, Centipede, Crystal Castles, et al–in its branding and advertising hoardings. So far, so Atari.
Its tutorial is also comfortingly simple. NeoSprint’s main campaign mode doesn’t include power-ups, speed strips, upgrades, or a boost mechanic you must master for success–it’s very much drive, brake, and steer. It also feels tight and responsive–at least, until you get close to a barrier or another racer.
The hitboxes are immediately noticeable. They’re uniform for all cars, so driving anything that isn’t square means that near misses become certain crashes. NeoSprint is a casual game, and vehicles have individual strengths and weaknesses, so this lax approach to collision detection is baffling; you’re forced to trust your judgment and hope for the best, especially as you deal with your CPU competitors.
Artificial unintelligence
Sprint 2 set the new bar for artificial intelligence in gaming, however primitive it was, but NeoSprint hasn’t learned much in the 48 years since its predecessor was released–its AI is frustratingly poor.
At the start of the first race of any given series, you kick things off at the back of the grid, and it’s a punishing affair, especially if the track goes into an early corner. Cars mash into one another; crashing, or being crashed into, saps all your momentum, setting you back by huge distances straight out of the blocks. Even when you’re ahead, other drivers don’t account for your presence, bouldering into you after a questionable corner.
Thankfully, but also woefully, this goes both ways. If you find yourself half a lap behind the competition–even late into the race–you can usually make it back because the AI is tragic. They crash into easy turns, fail to restart themselves, smash into one another, and sometimes just stop as if they’ve pulled over to remember if they locked their front door before heading to the track.
It’s especially hilarious in any race with a jump involved. Despite being programmed to understand their trajectory–something you’ll never know with confidence–they comically fly off ramps in different directions.
Like you, they’re also victims of rough landings, pinging off the floor like a rugby ball, in the vain hope it’s in the right direction. Sometimes, they’re stuck in a loop, restarting after every failed landing to relive the horror again and again.
Camera obscura
When starting on NeoSprint’s smaller tracks, the standard camera view–fixed on the full track–is ideal, and a great way to see what’s ahead. However, as soon as you transition to medium-sized courses, they become hard to navigate as the camera pulls out, meaning you opt for the car-centric, moving view.
You’ll constantly flip between the two options, which isn’t bad, but both options have drawbacks: the full-track view makes you squint, while the zoomed-in version prevents you from responding to future hazards, especially with the mad AI.
The isometric perspective complicates matters by making it difficult to learn and respond to the circuits, which are always three-lap affairs with no resistance from your fellow drivers. Buildings and track pieces obscure the asphalt you drive on, but most of these overlapping sections turn semi-transparent when you pass through them–an odd checkerboard effect that should be a clear circle. To complicate things further, trees and other decorative installations don’t get any treatment, meaning you can’t see a damn thing on fancier-looking tracks.
Crucially, banked sections, or rising and falling areas of the track, are tough to process due to the camera angle–including those all-important jumps, which take a long time to line up and successfully land. It’s just as well the AI is in the same boat.
Bells and whistles
You’ll clear the main campaign in next-to-no time–two hours max–and it’s not difficult, nor particularly inspiring. In my playthrough, I finished second twice: once due to stupidity, and another after a head-splittingly annoying experience with four other drivers who turned the track into a bumper-car circuit, beclowning me every time I tried to pass them.
To its credit, NeoSprint has quite a track builder suite, and as you race, you unlock new cosmetics. However, placing the track in your desired location can be an absolute nightmare due to the isometric grid system, which often appears hell-bent on placing your pieces in every square around the one you want. However, once you get the hang of it–especially tricky sections with rises and falls–you can get very creative.
Similarly, the Obstacle Course mode is a nice touch, offering a real challenge as you set fast lap times, learning to avoid oil slicks, cones, barriers, and sticky strips. It can be a little unforgiving in longer circuits, which can take up to a minute to complete–and near-perfection is needed for gold–but you’ll find good reason to keep trying for success.
Missing the mark
NeoSprint has the potential to be a great local multiplayer game–one with a group of friends and enjoying the game for what it is, warts and all, where there’s a level playing field and you all have to deal with its quirks and downsides together. In single-player mode, even with its challenging Obstacle Course mode, it’s just too dull, broken, and janky; you’ll find it hard to get real satisfaction from it.
If this was a $10 or $15 game, you could argue NeoSprint is a “try and see” recommendation–but not for $25. Wait until it’s on sale–or better yet, wait for one of the promising retro-inspired indie driving games that could land in the next few months.
