Zaacar Reviews

Its great fun to see cars get destroyed and see stuff left and right. Full car destruction is a banger.

[quote][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/33401179/]Follow my curator page for more recommendations![/url][/quote] I love vehicular combat games, I constantly check Steam to see if there's any upcoming attempts to revive the genre. I was quite excited when I saw that Zaacar was a measly $2.39 during the Summer Sale. Sadly, I don't think it's worth that right now. It's far too unfinished, even for an early access game. [b]TL;DR: Terrible vehicle handling, cars feel weightless. Barely any vehicle sounds. No one is playing. Can't unlock anything in bot matches and bots are braindead. Vehicle designs are just boring cars with Mad Max stuff thrown on them. Lastly, this game runs horribly (40-50 fps) on a 3080/i7 9700K.[/b] The vehicle handling is some of the worst I've felt in a racing game. Every vehicle feels weightless, if you try to make the smallest of turns you'll be greeted by your car going sideways into a sharp drift. I tried both with and without the drift control option and it didn't help at all. Additionally, sound in this game is [i]abysmal[/i]. There's barely any vehicle sounds. You can sort of hear each car's engine whining, but that's all there is for vehicle sounds. When enemies are firing weapons you won't hear anything unless you're within 20 feet of them. It makes the entire game feel lifeless. I also think each vehicle available is.. boring, aesthetically. They're just regular cars with some Mad Max stuff thrown on them, and you can't customize most of the appearance outside of specific upgrades. There's no trucks, no neat vehicle types you'd see in something like Twisted Metal or Vigilante 8, just a few muscle cars and a sedan. There's no one playing, but you can do bot matches. Sounds okay, right? Well, I'm glad the developers added bot support, more games need to do this, but the bots are terribly braindead here. During the Arena mode the bots just get in massive piles at the center of the map while they try to push each other and go nowhere. During the Circuit mode they make perfect turns that you definitely can't do, and they act like you aren't there if you're in their path. They aren't fun to play against. Worst off, it seems [b]you can't unlock anything if you do bot matches[/b], which means no upgrading your vehicle. Arena mode doesn't have any weapons spawn in the map, so if you want to bring a machinegun into a match you have to unlock the upgrade first, which you can't do since again, [b]no one is playing this game.[/b] Final straw for me was that this game runs horribly on a 3080/i7 9700K. I'm getting 40-50 FPS no matter what graphic settings I use. There's nothing going on in the map other than 49 bots hitting each other, why is it running so terribly? I see no reason to currently play this over something like [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/243800/Gas_Guzzlers_Extreme/]Gas Guzzlers Extreme[/url], which came out 8 years ago yet offers many more modes (Full Auto/Death Race-style racing, weaponless racing, demolition derby, deathmatch, etc.), has more in-depth vehicle customization, runs very well, and it has far, [i]far[/i] better sounds and vehicle handling. I'll keep my eye on Zaacar to see if things get better in the future, but for now I'm refunding.

Going to give this one a recommend with some major caveats. There is a solid foundation here for a good combat racer but in it's current form I'd recommend it only to those who really love car combat as these types of games are few and far between. At full price your mileage will vary, I'd recommend waiting for a sale. I paid full price and don't necessarily regret the purchase, I will keep the game in hopes of it receiving future updates. However, the game has not received an update for around 10 months at the time of this writing, so the chance of it receiving future updates is probably not great. The game looks fine, nothing here will wow you but it won't hurt your eyes either. Can't comment on multiplayer as I hate playing multiplayer games but the single play races are fine for what they are. You can set up matches with up to 50 bots in either arena combat or combat racing. Here you can earn money to buy more cars and a decent selection of upgrades. I think there are 5 cars and around 5 race courses and 5 arenas if I remember correctly. As for gameplay the main issue is the handling of the cars. Even with a controller I found myself slipping around the track like a car with bald tires on ice. Also there is a limited amount of sound effects. Either too quiet or not present are squeeling tires, collision sfx and combat related sfx such as gunfire and bullet impact. The sound design definitely needs more work. If the dev could push an update out to address the handling and the sound issues this could be a fun car combat fix for fans of the genre.