Music Racer: Ultimate (PS4, PS5, Xbox One, X/S)

Drive down neon laden streets to the beat of the music in Music Racer: Ultimate.  Pick a car and a road and a song and try to collect white dots while avoiding crashing into pillars to increase your combo score.  It’s available to play on PlayStation and Xbox consoles, but reviewed on PS4 here.

First you’ll pick your car.  You can customize the paint jobs on each one and unlock more as you play.  You’ll earn points depending on how well you can do, and you can use those points to unlock new cars and locations for you to race on.  Some of the cars you can get are based on popular vehicles from movies and TV shows, like the DeLorean from Back to the Future, lightcycle from TRON, and the Knight Rider car!

After you choose your car, you’ll pick a song that plays in the background.  You can choose from one of dozens of techno sounding tunes, or you can upload your own using a music program I’ve never heard of.  After that you pick a mode to race in.  Standard mode has you driving down lanes, picking up white cubes while avoiding pillars.  The more white cubes you collect, the higher your combo, but if you hit a pillar, your combo will break.  There is also a hard mode where the pillars are smaller and tougher to see from a distance, but honestly I didn’t notice much of a difference between these two modes.

Another mode you can play in is Zen mode which takes out the pillars entirely.  This mode is relaxing and a great way to rack up points if you want to unlock stuff.  There is also a mode where you can just watch the car drive to the music as you use the control stick to move the camera around.  You can also toggle options before you start any of these modes.  The most notable option lets you choose from simple or advanced controls.  Simple lets you press left and right to switch lanes, while Advanced is more like driving a car.  But since that’s all you control, both ways are pretty easy to grasp.

I liked the 80’s neon aesthetic of the game but since you can’t control your speed, you’re always moving really fast.  It makes it hard to react when a pillar is speeding your way.  Luckily there are plenty of songs and ways to play and things to unlock, there’s just not much in the gameplay department.

Kid Factor:

Music Racer: Ultimate is rated T for Teen with an ESRB descriptor of Language.  I’m guessing the language is in the lyrics, but I didn’t notice anything.  Nothing worse than what you’d hear on the radio anyway.  If you hit a pillar, your car will break into pixels for a second before going back to normal, and that’s as violent as it gets.  Reading skill is helpful for some of the text, but not necessary just to play.

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