Many a weekend of my youth was spent in an arcade playing racing games, they were for a very long time my favourite genre of games.
Believe you me, if I had the space and money, I would have a racing sim rig in the house, at the moment, I don’t even have a basic wheel!
But that aside, my favourite games that I played at home, were Outrun and Road Rash, beautiful games which just were so much fun.
And that’s where 80’s Overdrive comes in, its a 2D pixelart racing game, that evokes memories of Outrun.
Now lets start with this, I didn’t go out of my way to buy this game, I got it in a mystery bundle with Fanatical a few weeks ago, and I thought it looked ok and I might try it eventually.
But when I got my Steam Deck and fired it up, the first game in my Great on Deck section of the Library, was this game and I thought, why not just install it to give it a try.
And I am glad I did, its a very enjoyable game, mostly.
Its very 80s, like super 80s and its unashamedly so, in all its artwork, and its excellent soundtrack, which I am actually annoyed isn’t available.
So I spent a total of 5 hours and 36 minutes playing this game, mostly in career mode, which was fun, I liked the management aspect, upgrading your car, keeping it fueled and repaired.
But after a while, it started to get a bit dull, and to be honest at that point, I was mostly working towards the various achievements, I think if these were lacking, I would have stopped playing after a couple of hours.
The most annoying aspect was that no matter what you did, you could never get ahead of the other cars enough so that if you crashed, or were forced off the road by another driver or police car, you had zero chance of winning and you were better off restarting the race.
There were also missions, which were ok, and I enjoyed them, the finish ahead of such and such a racer seemed moot because you were already going to be trying your best to win.
I am glad it only cost me 95p, because I don’t think I would pay £8.99, its not that its not a good game, it just feels like an incomplete experience and it could do with more work to make it a better experience.
I would absolutely look at a sequel, because I think the bones of this are good, it just needs, a bit more, like the ability to retry failed missions, or reducing the rubber banding.
£4 would be a fair price I think, but I would pay £8.99 for the soundtrack, which is amazing!
I think in fairness, I can only give this game 6.5 out of 10.