With some reviews comparing it to Motorstorm or even Split/Second, I had to give Turbo Sloths a try ! As it turns out though, that's not it. Not it at all. It's a rather nice-looking racing game with a ton of visual noise, but also many shortcomings that will be hard to ignore.
Visually, Turbo Sloths looks pretty nice and its "futuristic post-apocalyptic" style is a success. Ruins and desolate environments are the ideal place for the crazy racing action that's about to happen.
Between the deadly turrets shooting at you from the side of the road, bombs and wrecking balls being dropped from an airship above, traps, drones and robot sheep crossing the road, TV screens and flying picture bots... It's not always easy to follow what's going on on the screen, but it's probably the game's biggest selling point (as long as your computer can handle it). Explosions and destruction are constant, so fighting the other contestants can often take priority over the actual racing.
To do so, a handful of weapons are available, from a machine gun to a flamethrower, or even a railgun... You can also pick a special ability : the possibility to jump, to slow down time, or a more classic speed boost. Those only add to the chaos and how hectic every race feels.
But Turbo Sloths is definitely an odd game.
You've probably noticed that all the characters are sloths, which is admittedly pretty weird... But why not ! They speak in broken English with misused idioms and sentences that don't always make sense (but they're sloths after all, and not all sloths can speak English). Then there's the curious Asian-AI voice speaking to you during the races, always providing useless "information" in the same broken English.
Other mechanics, like giant contraptions in the middle of the track that insta-kill you if you happen to be at the wrong spot when they decide to strike, are also questionable...
But those are not issues, they're design choices. And to a degree, so is the weight of the vehicles and the way the driving works. It feels heavy, slow, and even clunky, and upgrading the vehicles will only improve their performances slightly, without ever reaching the speed and flow of the introduction race. Most of the customization is only cosmetic and it's a shame, because it means you'll end up driving either a truck, slow and more resistant, or a UFO, faster but much weaker.
A little variety in vehicle builds would have been nice.
No, the real issue in my opinion is the rubber banding. It's fine when it gives you a chance to catch up after a big mistake, or gives the opponents a subtle boost to keep races close, but this is pushed to the extreme here. The AI will literally wait for you around the next corner if you fall behind, while being impossible to shake off when you're in the lead. It's not even a rubber band anymore at this point, it's a scrunchie !
What this means, is that how you do during the first 85 to 90% of the race will mean nothing. It's not as bad when you're in a Sprint challenge, but starting a 5-lap race knowing that 4 and a half laps won't matter is terribly off-putting.
Partly because of this, the gameplay feels extremely repetitive, and it's not the boss fights or the arena battles against bots that will prevent boredom from setting in.
Turbo Sloths is a bizarre experience. The presentation is interesting and the frenetic action does have its appeal, but even if you adhere to the repetitive gameplay that's often more action than actual racing, the game gets boring quickly.
It's a [b] 5[/b] to me. Not a good racing game, but maybe a way to blow off steam for a few hours, at the expense of the sloth population.
