Grind Rush Reviews

So here's the deal, the reason you would buy Grind Rush is if you're a huge Motorstorm fan, but that's not really the whole story. This review will honestly be less about the game itself and more about what it represents, so bear with me. AND GEAR is a Japanese team of two people who seem to release games as a showcase of their technical learning. Besides this game, they've released a couple others, but it seems like their pride and joy is the tools they've developed for gamedev as seen on their website, social media, and Github. The whole portfolio is all really well put together, and you can tell they love doing what they do. This game, then, is the ultimate love letter to Motorstorm. The core tenants of the series are here: Environmental destruction, chaotic multi-class racing ranging from quads to monster trucks, complex multi-route track design, boost that if overdone blows your vehicle to pieces, etc. Even the moment-to-moment user experience, things as simple as the slow-mo explosion camera and then driving a ghosted-out car after resetting to track is so accurate that you can just [i]feel[/i] the love for those old Motorstorm games radiating from the screen. The Motorstorm design language is translated almost completely, it's a perfect snapshot, and the nostalgia is real. Thing is, if you're walking into this fresh, there's not too much to see here. Outside of very Motorstorm-specific features, the game is fairly simple in the sense that this feels like a testbed for what could be an incredible racing game if given the time and resources. There is no career mode or progression, for instance, and while the devs have made excellent use of stock assets, nothing beats original art. And that's sort of my gripe. Yes, the game has had content updates with new tracks and touch-ups to the existing feature set, but it doesn't seem that the dev's are "all in" on this; as previously mentioned, it's a showcase of their technical prowess first and foremost. The game is an art pass and progression overhaul away from being a top-tier indie racing game, but beyond low-intensity updates and new content from their existing workflow, I don't see that happening: They have accomplished the core of what they wanted to do given the limitations, and it seems like they had a lot of fun doing it. As a customer and lifelong Motorstorm fan, it pains me to see the potential, but I know I can't be naive about it. Game development is an intensive, time consuming, and extremely risky business. There's a saying in the field that "people don't remember you by your first game," and in that sense, AND GEAR has executed an excellent strategy of spreading their talent across multiple projects to get their name out there. And that's kind of what I mean when I say I support what this game [b]represents[/b] rather than what it is. Strangely similar to real life racing, it's not about the race itself, it's about the story. I want to support the devs not just for this nostalgic vertical slice of my favorite arcade racing series, but because it's teams like AND GEAR that remember what makes games fun and distills that to its very essence in a showcase of deep respect for the craft. So in the end, I do recommend this game. If you have even a fleeting interest in the history of how this game came to be, from Evolution Studio's Motorstorm games, their rise and fall through Driveclub and Dirt 5, to the fascinating dynamics of modern indie game development that picks up the pieces and builds on the shoulders of giants, then you'll find that this game transcends it's limited form and speaks not just for the devs, but for everybody who was along for the ride of turning passion into damn fine racing games.