REKT! High Octane Stunts by developer Little Chicken Game Company and publisher No Gravity Games—Microsoft Xbox One review written by Nick with a copy provided by the publisher.
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
REKT! High Octane Stunts is a fun stunt car game with colorful visuals and easy-to-learn controls. However, it has a lack of content and depth that makes it an entertaining if somewhat short-lived experience.
There is an immediate, recognizable comparison to REKT! High Octane Stunts that is begging to be made, but this title in many ways reminded me of the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater or maybe Rocket League games. It is all about accessibility, tricks and crazy jumps. There is a great sense of speed and the airborne tricks are a blast to pull off. The recipe is a simple but enjoyable one, but it doesn’t really bring much new to the table after several hours with the title.
There is an online mode, but honestly it feels pretty underwhelming. The vast majority of my time was spent in single player, where you are basically going to either practice, or take on challenges to try and collect high scores. When you are about to undertake the challenge mode, you will get three challenges to try and complete. Some of them range from very simple (spin to the left twice, or simply turn or collect some clocks to extend your time in the arena) to more involved (super high jumps, a long period of drift distance or doing a ‘mini race’ where you hit targets in thirty seconds or less.
This ties into the game’s primary progression, which is earning enough experience to unlock new cars or enough credits to buy one of a handful of new stages. The environments are all pretty simple, but pleasing to look at. In many ways, this is a good description of the game’s overall visual aesthetic. Blocky, colorful environments and car models with lots of loops, bumps and platforms that encourage you to get airborne and perform as many flips and spins as possible to rack up points and try to get your highest score yet.
I would argue however, that this is not the most effective carrot to dangle. Maybe it’s just me – but high score chasing is not my top motivator in most games, and here it and getting to unlock new cars that are visually different but don’t really perform differently from one another gets a bit stale as far as motivation goes. Don’t get me wrong, the cars do have different stats like handling or speed, but unless you jump from something super fast like a car to a chunkier vehicle like a large truck, you don’t really notice the differences between them.
There is a bit of exploration to had in the stages due to various floating platforms and small secrets that can be found as you unlock new stages, but these things are not organically baked into the gameplay. There should be additional bonuses or modifiers for venturing up and into these more challenging spots in the map. Otherwise you spend time getting up there with no real benefit, which leads to getting lower scores, and this runs counter to the primary gameplay element of getting the largest scores you can in your allotted time.
It might have been nice to see some sort of AI bots added to the gameplay, creating new objectives. While some of the crazier flips and spins are fun to do on your own, the environments have a very simple look to them and without any other cars on it, you are really just battling time and points. It might have been nice to add some other mode, like a destruction derby or something just to add to the variety and challenge.
Summary
All in all, REKT! High Octane Stunts feels like an old-school arcade game. It is a bit of a misnomer to call it a racing game, despite having a car in it. At its core, REKT is all about the stunts and points, and while the game handles well and delivers on that promise, the number of environments and differences in unlocked cars are somewhat limited. There are not a lot of modes here either. What is there is great deal of fun for a time, but REKT! High Octane Stunts’ overall content is somewhat lacking.
Score: 6.25 / 10
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