Formula Retro Racing: World Tour (PC)

Formula Retro Racing: World Tour is kind of a one-trick pony doing a lot of dancing. It is an early access sequel to 2020’s Formula Retro Racing, which aims to be like the Formula 1 games of the 90s such as Formula One Grand Prix from 1991 with an arcade twist. World Tour expands a little further than racing around one established track you know and a few you probably don’t due to being non-existent. Looking at screenshots of the 2020 release, I noticed a revamp of the Caesars Palace GP on a hill street course, with many other images including an old config of Monaco.

World Tour does away with all of this and instead opts for several tweaks and complete fantasy tracks to fill the 18-track calendar for your Grand Prix mode. It can be said that Formula Retro Racing: World Tour currently does away with a lot of common sense things such as button remapping, a level of options that isn’t the bare minimum, and whatever this countdown thing is when on a menu. Say you go into arcade mode for a single race around the streets of whatever you decide, well you’ll be met with a 30-second countdown clock.

If you are placed over an unlocked track you will advance but if you’re over one of the locked tracks, you are booted back to the main menu. Functionally, what in the 90s arcade nonsense is the point of this? It is not just there you’ll find the countdown, as any selection option is met with a countdown including the arcade-like name input. Now I’ve said this a lot in terms of accessibility for dyslexics, but this was truly the first time I was looking at just a string of white characters on a white background, and I was struggling to see/focus on the font.

I don’t want this preview to just be a stream-of-consciousness rant of things I find wrong, because that isn’t fun to read. Though when I say Formula Retro Racing: World Tour functions well but is technically made about as well as deflated blancmange, I mean there are a lot of problems around a decent gameplay foundation that runs well. Of course, it performs well, it is a few rungs up the ladder from an animation done with a pad of sticky notes. Chances are a 2009 mid-range Dell could run it at 30 FPS, never mind a modern PC with a 30-series card.

Gameplay wise there isn’t much to complain about. As was the case when Adam was loafing about with that snake playing Forza while Eve moaned at him to do something, RT or R2 is your accelerator and LT/L2 is your break with the left stick controlling movement. That’s all fine since this is the same control scheme every game has had for cars since the mid-2000s. I will, however, complain about the sensitivity and the lack of ability to refine that or change the gear-shifting buttons of X/square and B/circle to whatever I feel comfortable with.

The only thing that might raise eyebrows on the gameplay front is that Formula Retro Racing: World Tour tries to make it less about pure straight-line speed or apex turning. No, instead you can use your speed to plow right through whoever is in front of you, leaving a fiery clump of debris behind you. Unlike the current back and forth between F1 stewards and drivers about track limits, it is also clear that all four wheels must remain on track unless you want to drop speed like a stone on a pond.

So no, the racing isn’t that difficult if you know where the apexes are and you can judge your speed reasonably well going into a corner to take the exit well: Something that countless hours of many other racers might have embedded in me. Formula Retro Racing: World Tour adds in stock-car racing, or more accurately stock-car drifting like you were Dominic Toretto at the end of the best of those movies. Given how twitchy the formula cars are, I thought the stock cars might be better, maybe heavier. I was wrong.

One slight movement of the left stick and you are sliding into the wall like Lucas Black, the oldest high schooler I’ve ever seen. That’s enough about the fast, the furious, and the unfortunate balding, but this is why I say a setting to turn down the sensitivity would have been appreciated. Instead, the options read as thus: music volume, SFX volume, vibration, and where your speedometer sits. There is also an option for language on the main menu.

This is why the gameplay of driving arcade-y classic Formula 1-style cars is good, but the technical work around it is like a soggy sponge folding in on itself. Restarting a race takes a few seconds as you roll through dull animations that are unskippable. If you play the GP mode you can skip the player selection timer but only if you tap A to skip every second, which the game doesn’t tell you, and the music on the main menu doesn’t loop. The rebuttal is of course “Well, it is mimicking 80/90s arcade games you gen-Z child.”

I’m not in Gen Z. I know what dial-up sounds like and I’ve played too much of Full Tilt! Pinball‘s Space Cadet table via many iterations of Windows for that to apply. Second off, I know that it is trying to bring that arcade feeling through gameplay, but overall design should be aimed at what is most comfortable for the player now. This second point is why I bang on about button mapping or other things like accessibility. You don’t accommodate an audience that no longer exists. You accommodate the one that is present which includes a wide variety of people, some of which don’t know what an arcade is beyond Stranger Things.

Formula Retro Racing: World Tour tries and succeeds at several things, including making the short experience of an arcade open-wheel racer reasonably fun. Repixel8 and CGA Studio’s technical skills might be something of a question. Though there is a first-person camera there is a lack of FOV change available in-game as of yet. This is what keeps hampering everything I’m saying, we’re talking about something that has launched into early access and will undoubtedly change, maybe even in the right direction.

As it stands, Formula Retro Racing: World Tour isn’t bad, but it has enough problems that I’m hesitant to say you’d get more than an hour or two of play out of its current gameplay. Yes, arcade I know but when so much of gaming now is about the time you can give something, this can be an issue. When the stock car drifts, whatever this is supposed to be beyond near unplayable, is too sensitive to take any chicanes or regular track furniture to be fun or interesting. That is the problem, it is supposed to be a niche, but Formula Retro Racing: World Tour isn’t catching new eyes with okay gameplay.

Love, that’s what this is all about. A love of 90s arcade racers that had some of those flaws that ingrained them into our memories with nostalgia. As I’ve already alluded to, I think CGA Studio and Repixel8 will correct course throughout the early access period. However, I’m not previewing or reviewing that point, I can only give an opinion on the now. The current state is reasonably good with the classic style F1/Indy-AAA-USAC-CART cars, technically hampered with minor issues like music on the menu not looping, but I don’t understand the stock-car racing.

I’ve honestly done that thing where you put all your weight on the handle of a Walmart basket after you’ve given yourself a good push, and I’ve felt more in control there than Dale Earnhardt on ice here. I don’t mind the drifting controls, I just think it is too sensitive and the off-track pavement is like the run-off areas of Paul Ricard making it near impossible to enjoy. It is a segment of gameplay that is that “whacky” physics thing that has become popular with the likes of Goat Simulator. Sadly, when the rest of Formula Retro Racing: World Tour is straight-faced, this tongue-in-cheek business feels out of place.

The tracks themselves are quite fun. Sure running a 70s-style F1 car down a weird take on Lombard Street is like setting off fireworks in a Bungalow, you’ll bounce up and down those San Francisco hills so much you’ll end up jumping into a house of pain. Nothing is overly complex or too challenging. It all feels like a simple way of racing, which of course Formula Retro Racing: World Tour is aiming for. The tracks and multi-class racing means you’ll run out of things to do beyond the 18 available tracks thus far.

Ultimately, Formula Retro Racing: World Tour might be an improvement and expansion of the game before it, but in early access right now, there is just enough enjoyment for a handful of hours. It is difficult to give a full-hearted recommendation given how lean and technically lacking some of these elements are, but the formula racing is great fun. Sure some of it felt like Max in Belgium that one time, weaving through the chicanes on four wheels with ease, but fun nonetheless. The biggest problem to be found is the stock-car racing element. Much like Marmite it is something you’ll either love its weirdness or hate its lack of skill.

A PC review copy of Formula Retro Racing: World Tour was provided by CGA Studio for the purposes of this review.