Retrowave 2 Reviews

Journey for the off ramp.

I was going to recommend this because it scratched a particular itch until I looked into when the next update would be, and discovered that this "developer" is one of those minimum-effort-assett-flip-churn-them-out type of outfits. I enjoyed the couple hours I spent with it, but I can't support this behavior. The industry is in enough trouble.

Great music, chill vibes, and cool cars. One of the best games to zone out to. My experience is to just pick a map, listen to the Vaporwave soundtrack and drive. There is nothing else to it and that is what I love. It is simple and straight to point. The creator has made something special with these games. It has been a great meditative tool. Highly recommend the first one as well if you like this game. Also, I am hoping there is another Vaporwave map gets added to this game. At the time of this review there is only one, but I will happily edit my review in the future to glaze the creator if he adds another one.

Retrowave 2 has better graphics and the way they added curve to the roads (being even optional) is a really good touch. The driving tho. It felt like I had more control in Retrowave 1. Than in Retrowave 2. Sometimes with enough speed I crash into a car, but instead of crashing. I just go straight through it. it may need more songs to certain maps or even in the menu, but that can also be fixed by just putting some music in the background yourself. Overall I love the game so far and I love the first one as well. I'd say that for occaissonal unwinding while yelling at the overpopulated cars in easy mode is worth the money. :D

Updater: What I said about the downsides of the new driving model was based on playing on hardware that couldn't push a solid 60fps. When running on hardware that can, it feels much more natural. Lower framerates cause the driving model to break down quickly, but without that, it's not nearly as bad as I made it sound. The traffic is still too dense and I concur with others that said you tend to hit things more frequently. Nevertheless, I put the new physics in perhaps too harsh a light, when it is heavily tied to framerate. Update: Alright I have to update this review so it's really accurate. The game has two issues compared to the first game. The driving model, and the traffic. Yes, they did change the driving model. The developer seems to have layered on some kind of "drive-assist" thing, where your car moves in almost step-like fashion, in which the amount you turn is connected to how far you moved the stick. It's sort of like turns have both their own arbitrary inertia, kind of like movement-slide in old FPS games, and also an arbitrary limit on them to make them "logical". I'm not sure the point of this. Visually, the turns look more realistic, but you have less control over them, which feeds into the second problem the game has. The second issue the game has is the traffic on the road. There are too many cars for the driving model. You have to go slower at first, until the traffic clears a little, but it's random chance whether the road will quickly populate again, and if it does, you will be hard-pressed to avoid a collision due to the imprecise nature of the driving model. I think maybe the developer might have been going for some type of gameplay where you're weaving from lane to lane and criss-crossing the road, maybe like a more-modern version of the kind of gameplay you used to get in all those old 90s Tiger racing games, but there are simply too many cars for that. I wanna say maybe the driving model was really tuned for Retrowave World, which is an open-world driver like all modern AAA racers, and these alterations were done to make that driving model behave well in Retrowave 1's paradigm, but I dunno. so I see where the discontent is coming from. I still like it, but it's not the banger the first was, at least not right now. Original: So I saw this come out and fizzle, and people were critical. I'm not sure what the problem is. It's like the first game, except has more of everything. The only issue I can see is that the shaders on the game are a little less artistically pleasing. It seems to be going for a more neutral or grounded aesthetic. It might not be an improvement. Other than that, the presentation is largely just as good or better than the first game, with a lot of nice little touches like Win 9X and old VHS-era UI styling. Music is good just like it was the first time, and also, omg that whammy. That whammy! I dunno what people want, mang. It's just as good.