Phantom Spark

Эта игра глубже чем кажется. Сейчас я не успеваю об этом рассказать, но как в случае с Decarnation или Viewfinder, у Phantom Spark есть терапевтический потенциал. Вернуться стоит, точно. Но уже на следующем круге спирали.

F-Zero X Trackmania Phantom Spark is a fun singleplayer game, held back slightly by its lack of customization. The gameplay is fun, the tracks are compact and genuinely fun to hunt. I just wish there were more of them or perhaps even a track editor. The game could, however, benefit a lot from some quality of life changes: • You spend a lot of time watching unskippable animations (like when unlocking new tracks or waiting for your time to be translated into a medal at the end of a race). These things should really be skippable. Same with the dialog. • Swapping the actions of the A and B buttons after finishing a race is genuinely infuriating. I can't count the number of times it booted me back to the track selection when I just wanted to re-run a track. • The game would benefit greatly from a few small customization options, such as key remapping, disabling ghosts, or the ability to disable the mid-race dialog boxes that sometimes pop up and distract you. Overall, I had a fun time with this game. The graphics are pretty and the core gameplay loop remained fun throughout my playthrough. I definitely got my money's worth from buying it on sale, but I think the regular price of €20 is too steep. It took me a little over 6 hours to 100% complete the game and obtain all achievements.

I never would have thought a time trial game would hook me so much, especially as someone who doesn't really play racing games.