Review: Hot Lap Racing (Switch)

Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)Although the Switch is home to an abundance of arcade-style racing games, the same can’t be said for more realistic fare.

This is most likely because the Switch’s hardware would struggle to handle the Gran Turismos and Forza Motorsports of this world, so developers tend to give Nintendo’s system a mess when making their own serious racers. Besides, let’s face it, on the odd occasion the Switch has received a port of a racing sim, the results usually leave something to be desired – case in point, the chonky visuals that were being churned out in the WRC games for years.

French indie developer Zero Games Studio is attempting to embrace the middle ground with Hot Lap Racing, a game it calls a ‘simcade racer’ – that is, one that has the serious elements of simulation, but boasts the more forgiving, fast-paced action of an arcade-style racer. The results do indeed meet somewhere in the middle, for better or worse.

Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)
Because it’s an indie studio, Zero Games doesn’t exactly have untold riches it can throw at Ferrari and chums, so it would be unrealistic to expect Hot Lap Racing to be bursting at the seams with thousands of mega-brand manufacturers. What it instead offers is a more eclectic mix of real and lookalike cars that should raise petrolheads’ eyebrows.

Given its developer’s French location, it’s perhaps no surprise that the likes of Renault, Citroen, and Peugeot feature among the game’s list of 50+ cars, but there are also some interesting manufacturers in here who don’t make regular appearances in racing games, such as Alpine, Venturi, Noble, Minardi, and Lola.

This is partly because the game’s main gimmick is the way it splits its car types – single-seater, GT, endurance, and the like – into modern and historic categories, allowing Zero Games to feature some of the more interesting models from the past instead of simply whatever modern vehicles it can get its hands on.

Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)
This dedication to the non-mainstream side of racing extends to the drivers you face off against, some of whom are based on real-life racers from a variety of disciplines (others appear to be fake). There are more than 100 of them, and they serve as your opponents in the game’s main Career mode – if you win a Championship they’re competing in, they’ll be added to your Driver Codex, complete with a little bio.

As well as the typical Time Trial, Championship, and Quick Race modes you’d expect from a typical racing game, Hot Lap Racing’s main offering is its career mode, where you take on a series of themed Championships covering different disciplines and time periods. As you tick these off – and complete them well enough to earn high rankings – you unlock parts for a fictional ‘Formula X-Treme’ car. It’s a solid way of doing things and ensures some variety, even if the 17 tracks on offer (and their different course variants) do get overly familiar by the end.

Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)
There’s also local multiplayer for one-to-four racers – either single races or full Championships – and online racing. The local split-screen performs well enough given the game’s limitations, which we’ll get to, whereas we weren’t able to find an online race during the pre-release period and we dare say it will be tricky to find one post-launch too.

As always, where it all matters is on the road itself, and it’s here where Hot Lap Racing will divide opinion. Performance was never going to be 1080p at 60 frames per second for a game like this on Switch, so the fact that the game aims for 30fps and achieves this for the most part is admirable enough, especially because the resolution never seems to drop to the extent that things start to look blurry – it remains nice and sharp, even in handheld mode.

That said, it doesn’t always hit that 30fps target, and the game does have a habit of getting choppy at busier moments, including the start of practically every race when multiple cars are on-screen at the same time. This is unavoidable and is just something you’re going to have to deal with until the pack spreads out a bit and there are fewer cars right in front of you.

Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)
Handling varies quite noticeably depending on the type of car you’ve chosen. Single-seat open-wheel (F1-style) cars have tight handling and are probably the most satisfying to control, but other types have very loose handling and have you powersliding all over the place, which isn’t as enjoyable as it sounds. It’s here where the game’s ‘simcade’ philosophy bites it on the bum, because in trying to be a jack of all trades it never really nails either side.

Players looking for a more realistic simulation experience will be frustrated at the lack of tuning options, the slippery handling, and the frankly awful music that plays throughout (this can thankfully be turned off but it exposes the weak engine noises as a result). Those craving more arcade-style racing, meanwhile, will get annoyed at HLR’s insistence on issuing penalties for going off-track, slamming into enemies, and the like, meaning the game finds itself in a weird middle ground where you can go gung-ho, but only to an extent.

We’d be lying if we said he didn’t have a good time with Hot Lap Racing, despite its drawbacks. Its performance certainly leaves a lot to be desired (especially during the starts of races) and it can never really tell whether it wants to be taken seriously, but we really like its eclectic choice of cars, its lengthy Career mode, and its focus on not only modern cars but those of yesteryear too.

Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)
As long as you take its issues into account before buying the game, there’s certainly enough to do here to justify the £30 asking price, and the fact it at least attempts to do something slightly different with its car roster is something that petrolheads should probably reward with their custom anyway.

Conclusion
Hot Lap Racing is too serious to be an arcade racer and its handling is too loose to be considered a serious simulation, but players looking for something that attempts to straddle a middle ground will get a kick out of its unique roster of cars and its dedication to the history of racing, despite its performance issues.