We’re always told to never judge a book by its cover. When it comes to reviewing games, the same can be said to never judge it by a trailer. I learned this quite the hard way when I selected the Switch port of Warp Drive as a game to review. I went in completely blind beyond the trailer so you don’t make the same mistake when thinking about purchasing Warp Drive for the Switch. While occasionally it is a good thing to go into a video game blindly in order to have a wonderful experience, I believe that it is important to show off as much as possible about this game as it will certainly not be everyone’s cup of tea.

Warp Drive is described on the Nintendo Store as “fast-paced racing with a brand new way to drive.” While that is certainly true, it is not the next step in evolution for the racing genre in terms of anything. While the game is very fast-paced, it is often too fast-paced for its own good.

From the blinding visual effects to the absolutely short races, it is a game that was not meant to keep you engaged for a long time. You’ll likely stop playing early due to either eye strain or having the tournaments whiz by you at breakneck speeds. I had a rare opportunity to have my friends help with testing the game and they were begging to play something else after just two races, but more on that later.

The thing that is distinct about Warp Drive is purely in its art style, which appears to be so cell-shaded that I would not be surprised if this ends up one day being a mini-game within the next Borderlands. While this art style stands out, it is often hurt by the speed of the game as well as some oversaturation of certain colors. The exact moments proving this are during the transition ramps where your vehicle moves from one part of the track to another part, similar to those that you can find in the recent Mario Kart entries.

Unlike Mario Kart where your vehicle will be launched with a parachute, Warp Drive has your vehicle turn into an eye-melting neon blob that launches forward at seemingly breakneck speed. In terms of color, Orange and Purple seem to dominate every single race track to the point that it seemed as though the other colors just got mixed together to make more of those two. 

While the single-player mode was on par with most racing games that come out these days, I wanted to truly test out the multiplayer for Warp Drive. Strangely, it lacks online multiplayer functionality, which is a major setback when it is compared to its competition. However, there is still local co-op so it wasn’t a total loss. When I had a bunch of friends over recently, I asked all of them if they could help me test out the game.

They were initially interested in the title and opening artwork, but those praises quickly seemed to fall away as soon as we loaded into the first race. The key reason for the praise initially falling was because the framerate quickly went into the single digits. Eventually, the confusion on where they were and what in general was going on with the vehicles overcame that criticism. After extended play, a lot of the later complaints had to do with both the lack of frames and the mind-numbing art style.

Warp Drive has been released on mobile, Xbox consoles, Playstation consoles, and various PC storefronts, but was first released in November of 2020. From looking at the reviews on those other platforms, it is clear to me that the developers have not solved any of the problems that caused it to get a 52% on Steam and a 2.7/5 on Apple App Store. It seems to me that the developers need to take a long look at Warp Drive before they decide to release it on any platforms that might still exist for them to release it on. In the meantime, I think people need to save their money for now.

A Nintendo Switch Review Copy of Warp Drive was provided by Supergonk for this review

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Warp Drive

24.99

4

Score

4.0/10

Pros

• Interesting Parts Mechanic

Cons

• Blinding Visual Effects
• Plethora of Bugs
• Low Frame Rate with Multiplayer
• No Online Multiplayer