Speed Or Death
This review is based on the recently released Nintendo Switch port of Speed Or Death from Doroles Entertainment. Earlier this year I covered a quirky yet entertaining isometric shooter, Super Trunko Go, from the same developer. When I was given the opportunity to cover another one of their games, I knew I had to give this one a look. Racing around in cars while dealing with a dynamic environment is always thrilling when pulled off successfully. Speed or Death's course choices seem promising at first as well. There are four courses in total in order of difficulty given by the game.
The beginner course places the driver in a Mini Cooper as they escape the city with all kinds of kaijuu after them. As far as "first courses" go, this one was a great first impression. The player is spawned in the middle of the chaos, there are burning buildings and debris flying everywhere. Traffic is in gridlock so the player will need to find alternate routes and it turns itself into a scramble. Soon the player comes across the monsters themselves as they chase the player through a blitz as they escape on the highway.
The next course includes climbing through mountains and deserts as players storm through military bases fighting giant worms that come straight out of Tatooine. Rounding out the second of the two "medium" courses is a speedway which confused me at first because it places the player on a legit starting grid. After avoiding monsters for the past two courses, it's great to have a resemblance of a normal race. That is until you realize that some of the cars are driving in the opposite direction. They are doing so to avoid a giant UFO destroying the track with lasers along with squid alien monsters reigning terror everywhere.
Lastly, the sole Difficult course is in the countryside complete with a scenic drive along the ridge, complete with hurling volcanic rocks and magma. Of course, the player is expected to go through the volcano while avoiding sleeping dragons and trying not to get burnt to a crisp themselves. For only four courses, each of the courses is unique enough to break away from the mundane "city" course or "desert" track. The visuals on the Switch are fairly decent despite the lack of anti-aliasing and most of the pretty bells and whistles being absent from the other console releases. When it's not stuttering to load everything due to destruction happening at once, the game runs smoothly in portable mode as well.
Unfortunately, that's where the positives end. First thing, the announcer is incredibly annoying and I wished there was an option to turn the volume off. I have this same issue with the DJ from Ridge Racer 2 and his eccentricity towards the race. I'm glad the guy is into his commentary, but at least Namco gave me the mercy of turning the sounds off. A bigger issue is Speed or Death's gameplay itself. Despite there being twenty cars, most of the cars handled identical to each other. That is to say, they all handled sluggish, with a dull sense of speed across the board. I marginally felt a difference between two cars that topped out at sixty and one-twenty miles-per-hour but I did notice the weight differences between the cars.
The lighter vehicles are the absolute worst to drive as they have a tendency to flip over. While I'm thankful that the devs included a respawn button, there are times when I respawned and my car would flip over regardless. This would be only an annoyance if each course wasn't timed. Much like the Cruis'n series of the past, each race is a one-lap sprint with a timer and checkpoints scattered throughout. In most racing games where there's a dynamic environment, there's navigational help given to the player to help guide them in the right direction. Usually, this is in the form of a giant arrow pointing in the general direction or even a map.
For some reason, there's no map or any navigational arrows to tell the player where to go. What's worse is that the annoying announcer occasionally acts as a call-out, complete with a graphic indicating the direction in which the player is meant to go. This is useless because the warnings are so sudden that by the time the player knows a turn is coming up, it's too late to react.
It's easy to get lost in the expansive environments and without a map, races are doomed to lose because the player is on a timer. It wouldn't be a big deal to restart if it didn't take anywhere from close to a minute to restart a race on the Nintendo Switch. There were times when I would reach the checkpoint right on zero, but I'd still get a game over even though I made it.
Between the sporadic behavior of the physics, the unforgiving timers, and the very busy environments, Speed or Death becomes less of a race and more of a "sidescroller on wheels." Honestly, some tuning of the physics and any form of navigation would turn Speed or Death from an idea that sounds good on paper to a game that's actually playable. There is some replay value for players who wish to know what each car model looks like, but the negatives outweigh the positives for the Nintendo Switch version, unfortunately. Consider getting Speed or Death for other consoles if you want to give this racer a try.
Speed or Death is available on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The Nintendo Switch version will be released on November 30th, with an early copy provided by Dolores Entertainment.