Slipstream Review

A classic born game

I bought it on GOG: https://www.gog.com/game/slipstream
Official game's webpage: https://slipstre.am/

Despite its retro style, this is one of the most fun modern racing games I've ever played. It is one of those that are born classic. It was heavily inspired by Outrun, but it doesn't feel like you are playing Outrun or a direct sequel. It feels more like a game made in the 90's for Sega CD or one of those classics EA games made for Mega Drive.

Both gameplay and artistic's choises feels like reminiscent of a bunch of games made by Sega, or at least made for Sega's consoles. I could feel also elements borrowed from Road Rash, Crazy Taxi, California Games and the list goes on. I think that the driftings should have reminded me NFS: Underground or any other game, but it actually reminded me Speed ​​Racer a lot (both the Wachoswki siblings film and its game adaptation), some tracks you just run sideways. It is like this: imagine if the Hollywood phisics were right. And as I love both Speed Racer film and game I was glad to feel this feeling. I also felt some nostalgic feeling of playing Atari's Enduro, I don't know why, pure nostalgia.

PROS:

• Difficulty. I won't gonna lie. At first glance this game is pretty difficult, but as you become familiar with the gameplay it gets a lot easier and the only thing that will keep you from complete the game is to memorize each race track. Therefore it is not unfair.
• Lenght. Keep in mind it is an indie game made by just one guy. You won't expect hours of gameplay, but despite its few race tracks, there are a number of game modes that will keep you playing for hours. If you want to complete this game, from the moment you first play until you familiarize yourself to the gameplay and beat every game mode you'll have more than 10 hours of gameplay easily.
• Soundtrack. It is simply gorgeous! It feels like Daft Punk were colabing with Felix from Housecat and Freezepop. If you like Electronic Music and synthpop you'll love this. Unffortunately the soundtrack can't be bought neither on GOG or Steam, but you can buy it on its page on bandcamp (https://effoharkay.bandcamp.com/album/slipstream-original-soundtrack). You can also find it on Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/album/5zLJ0D7spbWzfK5lRByDwv).
• Video filters. Slipstream was made to be played on a CTR. If you don't have one it might lose much of its feeling. But you don't have to worry (if you are one of those who can't stand the HDMI Sonic's waterfalls) the game has video filters that simulate CTR and NTSC.
• Offline achievements. Enough said. You don't need to be online or use clients to complete them.
• Somekind of a hidden story. I might be going too far, but this game feels like it has somekind of a storylike. By the characters speeches, you know not only their personalities but also can assume the story of eachone. The one who came from the future, the vampire, the prisoner (this is not spoiler, just guesses - you might guess different things than I).

CONS:

• Multiplayer bug. Until the day I'm writing this, the multiplayer is kinda bugged. You need to disable the video filters and change the screen resolution until you find one that makes the multiplayer mode playable.
• It lacks offline Leaderboards. It has online leaderboard on Steam, it doesn't on Galaxy. I understand there were some troubles to implement a leaderboard on Galaxy, so it's not the creator's fault and I won't complain. But, since it has offline achievements, I think it could at least have some offline leaderboards as the games that inspired Slipstream did.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

I don't think there's much left to say.

This game was pure nostalgia, but also brings this feeling of playing something that I never played before. It makes me even more glad when I found out that Ansdor (Sandro) lives in the same city as I am.

The reviewer PookaMustard, on GOG, said something a lot better than anything I could ever say: Slipstream is "Love letter to racing games of old".