Super Night Riders Review

Super Night Riders Xbox One Review Screenshot 3

Fast-paced action alongside vibrant scenery is what you would probably want from this arcade-style motorbike racer. It’s safe to say that a simple gameplay mechanic always has the potential to go a long way. Unfortunately though, it seems that this particular game hasn’t quite hit the spot. That being said, if you enjoy old-school racing, then you may look over some of these points.

The aim of the game is to beat the clock. As the timer runs down, it’s your job to race to the finish line as you try to avoid hitting into the back of other riders, or sliding off the course completely. Either way, the game doesn’t stop completely if this happens. Instead, your rider is slowed making it harder to get to the finish on time.

The gameplay is repetitive, but this doesn’t always have to be a problem. A game that has really good replay value is brilliant and often rare to find. Particularly in a game of this type, repetitive gameplay is expected, and if the game is made well, it can easily be played for hours. However, the issue here is the content that is available to play doesn’t work, so there’s no incentive to play it over and over.

Super Night Riders Xbox One Review Screenshot 1

Again, simple mechanics aren’t always a problem. But because they are simple, you would like to assume that there wouldn’t be many issues affecting the performance. Despite this, the reality is a collection of disappointing, aggravating occurrences where the bike could not be controlled enough to enjoy the experience. Sometimes I could move sideways and it’d be too slow, and other times too fast. I found myself constantly crashing into the back of other bikes or sliding off course into the dirt. Of course, this could just be due to my lack of skills but I still felt it happened too frequently to be purely be down to player error.

And this confused me. Not just because of the lack of control, but due to the traffic appearing in what seemed to be a sequence. I could almost predict where the congestion was going to be next and still somehow manage to collide into them despite all my efforts! This took away a lot of the fun I felt I should have been having.

Even more surprisingly though, there are frame rate drops. Yes, that’s right, a game this simple cannot even be run smoothly. And these drops always seem to happen at the most inconvenient of times. Again, not helping when it’s difficult to control the bike as it is. This just added to my frustration of the uncontrollable bike, and didn’t make for an enjoyable experience at all.

Super Night Riders Xbox One Review Screenshot 2

There has to be something positive about this game, and luckily there is – the visuals are great! Even when you’re flying off the track or ramming into the back wheel of an opponent, you can always rely on the classic art-styles to make everything look a lot more vibrant to counter the gloomy performance issues.

If I’m being truly honest though, there’s very few positives that I can say about this game. If a game this simple cannot be played on a high-performing console, then people will get bored very quickly. In comparison to similar games out there such as Racing Apex, it’s difficult for a game like this to even compete. However, if it’s a console arcade racer that you’re looking for then you may enjoy this title more than I did. There’s 1000 gamerscore up for grabs and it’s certainly worth trying the game for yourself before saying it’s awful. Because who knows, it may just be my poor skill dragging my score down!

Bonus Stage Rating - Poor 3/10

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Microsoft Xbox One code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.

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