Obliteracers PC Review by K3W3L
Genre: Action, Indie, Racing
Developer: Varkian Empire Publisher: Varkian Empire, Deck13
Release Date: Feb 23, 2016
I originally wishlisted Obliteracers because I mistakenly thought of it as ‘just another normal racing game’. I genuinely love racing games of all sorts, so that alone instantly merited a spot on my wishlist. Then when I read into detail what the game had going for it, I was honestly surprised and all giggly inside. Local support for up to 16 players! That’s right, SIXTEEN! And how do they accomplish that? I don’t really know…it almost seems like magic!
Obliteracers isn’t really your bog-standard racing game – while being fast certainly helps and makes it easier, that’s not usually how you win. Rather, the game puts an emphasis on keeping up with your opponents (à la SpeedRunners) and trying not to get eliminated, whether it be by being too slow, or being shot down by your opponent. Even if you are eliminated, you get to control a targeting reticle to try to airstrike your opponents. While you still cannot win that round, you can at least try to influence the result.
So how does the game handle multiplayer ? Simple – it does not split the game up into separate screens for each player. Rather, and this is the similar aspect to Speedrunners, all racers are on the same screen, and drop out of the race once they fall behind, out of the screen range. Of course, with many people on the screen at one point this can get confusing – the developers try to alleviate it however by allowing you to steer your car to get an indicator as to which one you are before the race starts. Racer numbers are also displayed above characters’ heads at all times, so you can just remember your number, and you’re all set.
The game is mainly split up into two modes – a career mode and a versus mode. Career mode serves as an introduction to the game, slowly introducing the various game types and the various maps. Generally, it’s a fun, though kinda easy distraction, and serves as a form of game content if you cannot find other humans in the same room or on the interwebs, and/or are too tired of racing with the bots. The bots are good, though.
Versus mode is where the real fun starts. You can either play online (should be bog-standard in games like this) or local. Here’s where the local multiplayer magic happens – you aren’t restricted to gamepads as control methods. You can actually use smartphones, tablets, and even laptops! The game will tell you upon firing it up how to connect – you connect to the same network and then join a specified web LAN address. I’ve tested it on phone and laptop, while the laptop uses the same control scheme as keyboard, the smartphone has its own special touch control scheme. Both of them control quite well and I haven’t noticed any input lag. The phone controls will take some getting used to, I’m not familiar with it yet. However, there are settings that allow you to change the sensitivity and other features of the smartphone keypad. Thankfully I can play vastly better on a normal keyboard, and to a lesser extent, gamepad.
Unfortunately, lag is more prevalent in online matches. While I could still control the car relatively lag-free, there was a discernible lag when I pressed the shield button – the shield would only appear about 1 second later. Not just that, but there might be other related factors, if I’m not wrong I’ve actually observed my powerups firing later than the time I pressed the fire button. I’m not entirely sure what their networking solution is, but, and here’s the thing, because I’m geographically located in a rather exotic location (i.e. NOT USA or Europe), I’m often disadvantaged in multiplayer games due to high ping and related factors. Oh well – I’ve tested it out via a few matches anyway, and surprisingly came rather close to winning one, despite being slightly less aggressive than my opponents due to the ping issues.
The music is awesome and gives a rather relaxed vibe to the game, in stark contrast to the often frenetic mood during races. Graphics-wise, the game was built in Unreal – it looks great. I’ve had to play it on Medium or Low graphics though, any higher than that and my framerate would dip below 60. Of course, I don’t necessarily have the best computer in the world, but it’s still good enough to run most high-end games. Interestingly enough, I did notice that the video is slightly “blurrier” on the lower graphical settings. Just a minor quibble though as there is still good enough detail to make out everything.
Lastly, there’s a large variety of race modifiers used to spice things up, and every single character, I believe, functions exactly the same, so whether you win or lose is mostly dependent on skill/luck and not by the car you chose.
Pros:
Support for up to SIXTEEN players
Awesome graphics
Relaxing music
Relatively simple to complete career mode
Great options/map variety
Cons:
Controlling on a smartphone may take some getting used to due to lack of tactile feedback, also not entirely intuitive
Slight loss in graphic fidelity at lower video quality
Online race lag
K3W3L gives Obliteracers a Drastik Measuer 8.5 out of 10 (85)
Definitely recommended! I had so much fun with this despite mainly testing it out on my own (and roping my brother in for a few multiplayer races). Despite the online multiplayer quibbles, I know I’m definitely going to try bringing this over to a friend’s house in the future for a game session (and thanks to Steam, that’s a pretty easy job).
http://store.steampowered.com/app/368740/
