izigame.me

opening disclaimer: i don't really recommend for or against this game, it's decent but not great or terrible, i have to pick one for a steam review, i also might sound angry, mean or upset but that's just me all the time, i like this game lol.
this game is very curious, it is a good classic racing game, it's a pretty nothing roguelike, it's a somewhat lacking visual novel and it's got some really nice visual art, as well as music, but the story is nothing special, the plot devices are extremely literal; how you're running away from your fear, racing against (totally not yourself) someone in the same car, that no one knows anything about except that they're really fast, which is .... suspiciously similar to the main character you'll be thinking the first time you see it, then the second and the third it becomes a bit grating, why have the game play out the same 3 times, to the MC's absolute non-reaction, (atleast in other timeloop games like for example alan wake's american nightmare alan is very clearly somewhat irritated and confused by it) until the MC realises the obvious loophole in the contract that i personally already figured out by that point, it's a fun experience with likeable characters (other than the player character which is literally a character you select your exact experiences to fill in, which again is neither great nor awful) haven't finished part 4 yet but if they actually make the player character a woman no matter your choices then bonus points for having some amount of rigidity and commonality to any player's story which i think all games should have SOME of, i don't like the blank slate protag concept in these extremes where it makes the character feel too generic and like a vessel even though they aren't explicitly supposed to represent an empty vessel for the player in a meta sense, if they have a past of being a famous racer why do they have no personality or deeper history? this to me feels like a weird and largely non cohesive character design, i feel that although it's an interesting choice to do this it would be better in a more silent hill 3 or until dawn way, or even fallout NV where you answer generic, psychological profiling questions in a more medical environment where it's an in universe thing rather than basically a settings menu selecting whether you had a good relationship with your family, i mean it's nice that the things the villain taunts you for are personal and actually targeted, more specific words are often stronger and more emotional than generalised things of course so i see what the idea was but it seems somehow wrong or forced that the game explicitly asks for them at the start of every act just to then immediately try to make you shocked when it told you it wanted to use them to make you feel something or whatever, this could be slightly alleviated even just by having the questionnaire be a big blank file you fill in ALL at the start before you play, it could even be the villain's contract that the MC has signed, there are ways this aspect of the story could have felt less forced and corny and more like creating your characters backstory, which in games like fallout is part of the appeal (though that is an RPG, you don't need this in a visual novel or racing game) i feel like the customisation of a character almost entirely was misunderstood, it exists for a reason in games it exists in, and when it doesn't, which we can see in games like.... idk the EA WRC games or something it feels hollow and pointless and like a waste of time, point being that it's a clear risk not very worth taking in this project and therefore confuses me, it feels like the idea guy was also the development guy, which is fine and i still think it's a good game but maybe there should've been a 'we're not trying to reinvent the wheel' guy there too because i do like the minor characterisations we get in roadside events where you have 2-4 options for a given situation, which of course then have pre written responses and actions that i think are a charismatic, well written character for the tiny ammount they give us.
this game also has some actual problem problems, there is a bug where sound is attenuated as if someone is talking, so the car and the radio are quiet to let you hear them but it's bugged for the whole stage and no one is talking anymore and infact all future voicelines in the stage won't work, also the UI doesn't show everything you may need to know, like for example i lost a run because i made the mistake of not selecting to pause the fear because i thought i would make it to the end, since it said it was a few hours behind me, but seconds later it overtook the end, there is no indication of when it will do that other than guessing and the way fear works on the map is slightly confusing so it's hard to know. another problem is that the driving physics feel like an oldschool racing game, like outrun or something, this is a problem. because as important as those games were, they kinda suck, it feels bad to drive a car that is unresponsive and weightless, i'm driving a muscle car that weighs probably close to two tons, why does it feel like it weighs 20 lbs and simultaneously 4 tons, it also suffers from the classic racing game issue of ''useless-brake syndrome'' brakes do not slow the car down at all and you drift the car by letting off the gas, not letting off the brake, it will, confusingly, not really drift while accelerating, which doesn't make any sense, not just in terms of realism because this game is clearly stylised and arcadey, but it doesn't make sense to play, think of the driving in grid 2, this game should feel like grid 2 or burnout, those games atleast to me feel a lot better and more intuitive to play, arcade racing games done right, or at least, in my opinion, better, another problem is that once i crashed and got reset onto the road automatically but i was unable to accelerate quickly enough to evade police capture and they stunlocked me twice, i got reset from crashing once and then instantly lost my entire run on the final road because i was physically unable to escape the police cars the game reset me directly into TWICE, please atleast add a buffer for resetting and not getting instantly arrested or make police move away slightly when you respawn, also sometimes you will hit small wooden gates/fences at 150 miles an hour and spin out uncontrollably, i can't believe i am saying this but that is not in fact how multiple tons of metal would react upon hitting a small piece of wood and this is a very irritating quirk that screwed me over several times, please make it so that the car is not as sensitive to small collisions with fragile objects you have, intentionally, no other choice but to hit like gates and wooden barriers in police roadblocks, atleast if the brakes aren't going to slow you to a speed where you can control the spin.
at this point i don't think i would choose to spend £16 on this game, 8-10 is definitely a more realistic price point for me
cliff notes: don't try so many things that no one has done, there's a reason no one made a visual novel that's a racing game that's also a roguelike, it doesn't add much really.
don't be afraid for your character to have a character.
take the aesthetic/feeling of oldschool racing games and leave the physics, outrun feels weird to play, this doesn't have to.
likes are the writing, characters are charismatic and funny, the woodstock '69 bit really got a good laugh out of me.
also the music is somehow mostly period accurate for the 70s and somehow good, which is already shocking, but it's very inetersting how the music is so varied and yet all of similar quality, it's very good.
and the sound design, non protag characters and the car choice are all stand out, good, quality parts of the game
also i'm by no means a game designer so these are probably all stupid criticisms in ways i don't understand.