Animal Rivals: Up In The Air

Relax if you're concerned about the description claiming that this is a party game. Animal Rivals is a solo game too. Regrettably, the overall impression is mixed. It sits right in the middle. The game's main characters are nine ominous-looking beasts. Their design is unique; each one is shaped like a rectangle with arms and legs protruding. Some of them, such as the shark and the rat, appear to be quite terrifying. Each animal has a unique weapon or talent that can assist you in winning a race. Their use is limited, therefore you must acquire blue or yellow floating things to recharge them; blue is for various firearms and bullets, while yellow is for special abilities. Health is the final collectable. Flying is a straightforward process. It's great that you don't have to keep your finger on the throttle all the time. Simply accelerate to top speed and focus on turning at the appropriate time. While losing your plane does not always mean the race is over, you will lose critical seconds. If you're not careful, you'll die a lot. Even the tiniest contact with the surroundings will cause your plane to crash. And that’s not because of the flying mechanic, which is very good. The main source of frustration is barely making the corner and slamming into a checkpoint. The temporary shield you get after each death won’t help; you might crash into the sides of a checkpoint right after respawning. Repeatedly! The most interesting mode is the career mode. You'll have to complete 30 races in a linear fashion. Each features a brief text that attempts to explain the story of a major tournament. It's not going to work. It's merely an excuse to race various animals across five stages. The races themselves are hit-or-miss affairs. The game modes are standard, as they are in every racing game. There's the classic race in which you must pass through rings. Most of them work OK, but some of them have rings positioned in such a manner that you have no idea where to go and end up flying around until the game decides you're not heading in the right direction. Alternatively, simply crash the plane and respawn at the correct location. Following that is an elimination race, in which the last player is eliminated after a set amount of time, drag racing with short tracks and sharp turns, capture the flag, in which you must hold the flag for the longest amount of time, and an unplayable demolition race in which you fire weapons at opponents. This mode is horrible because, despite a worthless arrow pointing towards the enemy, there is no means of knowing where they are. Staring into the bright colors and trying to identify an enemy in the distance hurts my eyes. The garage is where you can customize the plane. The number of starter pieces is extremely limited. New ones, on the other hand, are obtained through winning races in the career mode and by simply playing single tracks. You don't even have to come out on top. Varied parts have different stats that don't really matter, but it's still refreshing to know that it's not all about looks. If you don't want to bother, you may either select a button to randomly set all the parts or stick with the default plane. The bad news is that the default aircraft is monochrome. A chance to save your favorite plane is another thing I'm missing. It's all too easy to click one of the buttons and lose all you've worked so hard to create and customize. Custom planes, on the other hand, can only be used in single races. For an indie game, the graphics are passable. Everything is bright and vibrant, verging on sugary at times. I'm referring to the candyland stage, which features a variety of sweets strewn throughout the terrain. It doesn't blend well with the forest and city, which are more grounded and realistic. Despite the fact that the game is billed as a party game, I don't think anyone will play it for very long. It's tolerable for a fast run through the career before you're done. There are also some bugs. You reach a point where the game loops at the winning podium scene after unlocking a few plane parts in single races. There is no way to return to the main menu or exit the game. Alt + F4 is the only way out. At least one achievement remains unlocked; World Tour necessitates winning a race in every stage, which you already do in career mode. If this means winning everything in single mode all over again, the problem becomes worse because won stages aren't marked in any way.