Racing games, particularly over-the-top arcade racers, are a dying breed. You have your more ‘ultra-realistic’ Forza and Gran Turismo games. However, just a really fun, silly, wacky racer is much harder to find but, that seems to be changing. Fairly recently, we had Hot Wheels Unleashed and it was glorious. Throwing their hat into the ring next is developer Team6 Game Studios and publisher GameMill Entertainment with NASCAR Arcade Rush.

The thrill of NASCAR meets the rush of arcade racing in a new game that puts you in the driver’s seat of a completely new NASCAR experience with re-imagined, iconic racetracks in unmatched high-speed, wheel-to-wheel action!

Yeah, this is what I’m talking about. A racing game that doesn’t take itself seriously. Read the marketing blurb and marvel at the trailer up there. Fast racing action, wild tracks, loads of customisation and more. It’s NASCAR, but given a real arcade boost. Unfortunately, the trailer is doing all of the heavy lifting here because NASCAR Arcade Rush is nowhere near as great as the blurb or trailer makes it out to be.

As exciting as NASCAR Arcade Rush looks to be, that is about as much fun as it isn’t to play. For this review, I really need to bring up a better example. Did you ever play F1 Race Stars from 2012? It was an official F1 game with the licence and everything, but turned into a wacky kart racer… and it was brilliant. Cartoony, wonderful and exciting tracks based on their real-world counterparts (you could jump into a shark). Weapons, items and so much more. Seriously, F1 Race Stars is a fantastic arcade racer and you can get a copy pretty cheap these days. You definitely should too.

When I saw the trailer for NASCAR Arcade Rush, that’s what I was expecting, a NASCAR game done in the same style as F1 Race Stars. Stupidly over-the-top tracks to race on, weapons, power-ups and such. Nope. What you get is an arcade racer that I really should be describing as being turned up to 11, but is stuck at 5 instead.

The good news is that NASCAR Arcade Rush is fast and it runs buttery smooth. The bad news is that it’s no fun and lacks any real gameplay or depth. The car handling is terrible, it feels way too light and floaty as if the car isn’t even on the track. Then there’s the rubber-banding. If you’ve ever played an arcade racer before, then you already know what rubber-banding is. It’s a mechanic that devs put in these kinds of games to keep the races close. You can put in a perfect lap and the opponents will still be close by. Now, I don’t mind rubber-banding in these games, generally speaking, but here? It’s a joke. It’s not that opponents are close by with NASCAR Arcade Rush, it’s more a case that they stay up your jacksie no matter what and I mean just inches behind you every step of the way. It doesn’t feel like fair rubber-banding, it feels like you’re being punished for playing well.

The on-track action is just dull. The tracks themselves are not as wacky as they deserve to be. The odd jump aside and some of the more interesting banked turns, the tracks are generally bland and they all feel very samey with little to no variety. Then there are the cars themselves. As the trailer boasts, ’75 years of horsepower’ and there are several decades of different cars to drive. From your more usual NASCAR cars to pick-up trucks and even pastiches of real-world cars. But, they all drive exactly the same. There are no stats, no differences between the cars and no strengths or weaknesses. The cars are purely cosmetic. As most of the cars are locked and you have to play to unlock them, it makes that practice and the game progression a bit redundant when all the cars are the same anyway.  Is it worth putting in several hours of gameplay to unlock a car that is exactly the same as the one you start with? No.

There are no power-ups or weapons either. You get a boost meter and some on-track boosts… and that’s it. Even so, that boost is game-breaking as it is too damn powerful. You can win every single race by staying in the middle (or even the back) of the pack until the last lap and then, just boosting during the final couple of corners and you’ll be in first place with zero challenge. It’s almost impossible to lose a race unless you purposely go out of your way to do so. The no power-ups or weapons thing makes the races damn dull. Coupled with the very bland tracks that are not as wacky as they should be and you’re in for a very tiresome time.

You can’t drift around corners and given the awful feel that the cars have when driving, the lack of drifting definitely hurts the gameplay. There’s no drafting/slipstreaming either. In several ways, NASCAR Arcade Rush feels like it is unfinished. I thought that maybe I was sent some kind of beta version as a review code, that this was a demo and the full game would have far more interesting tracks and power-ups to inject some enjoyment into the game. Nope, this is the full release and it is woefully dull. Bereft of any truly wacky and over-the-top racing that the trailer is promising. Yup, there are a ton of customisation options for your car and driver to unlock and use, but when the game is this dull, do you want to spend all the time needed to unlock them? No, not at all.

There’s only one car view and it’s not a very good one. A bit too low to the ground which makes it very tricky to see what’s in front of you. There is a rival system… and it doesn’t seem to do anything. Every race that I did, I got a message pop up to tell me that I have a new rival. One of the cars had an icon over it that indicated my rival, but it doesn’t add anything to the actual gameplay. I think that you get a slight XP boost (to unlock stuff that offers no variety to the gameplay) if you beat your rival, but it makes no difference to the actual racing.

NASCAR Arcade Rush is a game that is begging to be unleashed, to be a wonderful and crazy over-the-top racer. A game that could’ve made an impact if the devs had been a bit wilder with their ideas. Instead, you get a very bland and ‘safe’ title which offers pretty dull racing, no challenge, no variety and no reason to play more than a few minutes.

Now, I come to my biggest gripe with NASCAR Arcade Rush, its rather steep £40 price tag. This is a huge no-no. This is hardly worth £10, never mind £40. The gameplay is bland, the tracks are not very exciting, the car handling is awful, there’s no depth to the races, the cars are all the same, the customisation is generous but pointless and the game is a waste of time and money. You can get free racing games on your phone that are better than this £40 one. Even better, you can pick up a copy of both Hot Wheels Unleashed and F1 Race Stars for less than the cost of this game, and they’re both  awesome to play too.