Slipstream [Xbox]

Developed by Ansdor Games and published by Blitworks, Slipstream is a classic arcade-styled racing game heavily inspired by the likes of OutRun. Able to played alone or with a friend; with Grand Tour (5 connected stages with branching paths) and Time Trial (race against your own best times in three laps) both being exclusive to the solo mode, and the rest being able to be played in Single or Multiplayer: Grand Prix (5 races with season scores and upgradeable vehicles), Single Race (simple, with customisable settings), Cannonball (rally style through multiple stages, with customisation), and Battle Royale (elimination based, with the last player eliminated at the end of each stage).

You’ve got access to a short Tutorial to teach you the basics, as well as drifting, utilising a slipstream, and time rewinding (where you can rewind up to 5 seconds if you make a mistake, with a cool VHS effect). There are five different cars to choose from: Type 23, Epsilon, Arashi, Lynx and Aurora; each with different stats for top speed, acceleration and handling. You can choose between manual or automatic drifting (with automatic taking away a little bit of control you have over your speed), as well as which Class you wish to race in, from Light, Medium and Heavy, which will adjust the acceleration and top speed of your challengers (essentially just to tweak the difficulty).

There are a few different characters that you can play as in multiplayer, and playing solo will have them face you as opponents. Trying to stay ahead during a race can often prove to be quite challenging, even on the lower difficulties, as it’s very easy to mistime a drift and bump into the edge of a track, causing you to massively lose speed, flip your vehicle, or both. As soon as this happens, you can pretty much say goodbye to a win for that stage, as catching up with your opponents is mighty tough. Once you get the hang of drifting, the overall feel of each race improves drastically, as this seems to be the only thing that can feel quite punishing.

Each of the stages has their own theme, including some fantastic designs such as Monument Valley, Ice Cap and Highgate Cemetery - all of which have gorgeous environments. There are different visual adjustments including Pixel, CRT, NTSC and a various combos of them, that allow you to customise how you want the overall appearance to be, mimicking old TV screens. The retro synthwave soundtrack, composed by effoharkay, is super catchy, and there’s a decent selection of tracks to keep it from feeling repetitive.

You can view a range of stats, such as Cups Won, Tracks Visited, Exits Found, Rivals Defeated, Routes Taken, and Cars Used, allowing you to keep track of how you’re doing. There are a bunch of different routes to take on certain tracks, leading to different stages depending on the side you choose, but as you need to keep winning against your opponents to continue, it can frequently prove to be quite difficult to take every route available. Achievements can be viewed within the menu too, aligning with the Xbox achievements - which can be nabbed in around 8-12 hours, though the actual game itself can be completed much faster than this.

Overall, we had fun with Slipstream, but did find that it felt a bit lacking, due to there not being a whole lot of content. Online multiplayer would have been a perfect inclusion, as playing through rounds such as the Battle Royale would have worked brilliantly playing against friends online. Local co-op is decent, but having the ability to play with a full roster of players, getting eliminated one by one would have upped the stakes. Priced at £7.99 on the Xbox Store, it’s a well-priced budget title, but definitely could have done with a bit more content, whether additional vehicles or tracks.

In the end, we decided to give Slipstream the Collecting Asylum rating of 7.5/10.

Are you interested in Slipstream? What do you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!

- V x

Thank you to Blitworks for the Slipstream Xbox review code!