Horizon Chase Turbo does a good job of balancing fun and challenge. Early on I thought I would breeze through the game but the tracks do get more difficult and by the end I was happy if I was getting third place. Even if you get first place in all the races you can still try extra challenges such as getting all the coins at the same time to get a super trophy. You have to also manage your fuel which you can replenish buy driving over canisters. You get upgrades by unlocking upgrade races and getting third or better in them. You can really tailor your car with these to whichever style you want. I do wish that you could simply use points in whichever category you want where the actual upgrade system gives you usually three choices each of which upgrade two different sections of the car. Sometimes I got a balance I wanted but others it was picking the one that I wanted the most even if none gave me exactly what I wanted. My biggest issue with the game is that it employs an auto steering feature and you can’t turn it off. I noticed it quickly and was able to mostly learn to adapt to it but the fact it can’t be turned off is ridiculous and annoying. That all being said the game is simply fun. It has a good selection of cars; a decent variety of tracks; good music; and doesn’t require you to be a die hard racing fan to enjoy it. One other feature I want to highlight and praise is that when you pause the game and then unpause it there is a short timer before the game starts back up. This gives you a couple seconds to prepare yourself and was much appreciated by me. One other nitpick I have is at some point the game removed global leader boards and only have local now. The biggest issue I have with this is that the game assigns you a user name that is used for the leader boards and you can’t change it. I remember even back in the 90’s on local leader boards for games I was allowed to enter three initials so I don’t see why a game decades later can’t allow this.
I played Horizon Chase Turbo on Linux. It never crashed on me and I didn’t notice any bugs. It was very well optimized. I played on a system with onboard Intel graphics and it ran wonderfully even maxed out at 2560P. The game isn’t a technical wonder but has a great art style and invokes nostalgia without being low resolution. The game has a resolution option; a v-sync toggle; and three AA settings. I used my Logitech F-310 game pad and it worked without any issues.
Game Engine: Unity
Disk Space Used: 1.4 GB
Game Version Played: 2.6
Game Settings Used: 2560x1440; 8x AA; v-sync on
CPU Usage: 11-21 %
RAM Usage: 5.2-6.4 GB
Frame Rate: 76-157 FPS
I was able to beat the World Tour campaign in seven hours and thirty minutes. I completed it to the tune of 74% which means I haven’t gotten a super trophy on each course or even gotten first place in each course. I also haven’t even touched the other game modes yet. I paid $6.64 CAD for the game and given how fun it is and how much content there is in the base game it is easily worth it’s current asking price of $22.79 CAD.
My System:
Intel i5-12600K | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | Intel UHD 770 | Mesa 23.0.4 | Western Digital Black SN850 500GB | Trisquel 11 | Mate 1.26.0 | Kernel 6.6.8-gnu | MSI G2730QPF 2560*1440 @ 165hz