Acro Storm Reviews

Felt like Xtreme GIII racing, but if you were using the hoverbikes from Jet Moto. It's not bad, I was just hoping for it to be something more than it was.

This is a game with a lot of promise. It's also a game that's still in it's infant stages, so I'll cut this short and sweet. As it is now, Acro Storm has the potential to be a really nice little addition to the futuristic racing genre and a VERY welcome addition to the "Hover Motocross" sub-series. The game itself is a futuristic racing game with Mario Kart style power-ups, which comes out feeling like the lovechild of Jet Moto and Rollcage. At the time of this writing there are four racers, three bikes, four tracks and about nine or ten power-ups. Of the four characters, there's one human man and three alien women. I found myself using the guy most often simply out of complacancy. The designs on them are kinda cool, but the modeling work could use some refinement. the bikes offered are all very beautifully crafted and distinct with the added bonus of allowing you to customize it's color using color sliders. None of the bikes or players felt very distinct, which can be atributed to the game's infantile state, but it gets the job done as far as having distinct options when it comes to the bike you ride and the ass you look at while playing. The racing feels solid for the most part though, paradoxically, the basic turning feels too stiff while the drifting is so loose, it feels more like strafing half the time. The power-up system, while absolutely bewhildering in presentation, is adequately functional once you figure out what the power-ups actually do. While it could use several dozen buckets of Elbow Grease, I'm already loving the gameplay style this game is trying to go for. The levels themselves are located in an arena circuit, an arid canyon, a frozen outpost and a seaside industrial facility, all in varying levels of completion and polish. The tracks really vary for me. The canyon track, being the first one developed, is really quite fun to race on and the easide industrial facility track is really fast and surprisingly challengng. The ice outpost track, while incredibly fast, is also a bit....bland...Everything looks the same along the track to me, which makes races seem to drag on forever. The arena circuit is also pretty boring, being just a simple circle. It need more going on in it. When it comes to music....the main menu track is pretty bland and uninspired....BUT WOW, DO THE RACETRACK THEMES SHINE! Each track has it's own distinct theme with it's own distinct style. From a Breakbeat/Techno track that feels like it came from a PSX racing game on the canyon stage to an absolutely stunning Trance anthem in the ice outpost, the music grabbed me from the word go and I have to admit, I oftentimes fire up the game and get in a few laps just to listen to the music! Not only do the tracks help accentuate the races, but the varying genres help to build upon the enviroments to give them their own personal flair. Keep this up and I may start begging for an OST! Overall, I'd say this game needs a LOT more work, but then that's why it's Early Access. I'll be excitedly waiting to see what the next update brings us because this is shaping up to be the beginning of a beautiful racing game.

I bet most people would describe Acro Strom as "Wipeout and Mario Kart had a baby". There has recently been released some amount of anti-gravity racers but there aren't many hoverbike games, which in the end are quite different things. You don't use air brakes here, and genereally the game is more arcadey and generally it does not feel like it wants you to train it every day for many hours to become a better pilot, as is the vibe that I get from most anti-gravity racers. This game feels to me that it prioritizes having fun (instead of the "simulation-level skill needed in order to race in these speeds"), via really-easy-to-grasp mechanics and fantastic sense of speed, nice music and personal presentation. This game really feels that it could have been in the arcade right between Hydro Thunder and Crazy Taxi, and I mean this in nothing but in a good way. I have been looking for racing games with one criteria: Let me feel the high speed. I want to go fast! Personally I don't get the sense of great speed in for example any simulation type of games. I want to go faster! And in my research there are only a handful of these kind of games available on PC. Acro Storm manages to be one of those. The game being in pretty early development there is not too much content and as per usual with EA titles, don't buy this game if you are expecting to get many hours worth of content or if you are impatient or if you can't stand of any inconveniences (such as lack of tutorials, little bit weirdly acting powerups, little bit "messy" HUD, not rebindalbe keys etc.) Let's just say that there are pretty rough edges, but the good core is there already. I would describe the current state as a "sample" of the fruits of the development this far, and I am generally very cautious about EA products, I only buy them when I feel I want to support the developers for what they are doing. Nevertheless, the game already offers nice kicks from speed and shows alot of promise with it's personal style. Now, why do I recommend the game as of now? +That feel of speed. +Piloting (Or is it driving? Surely not flying?) feels pretty good. +Nice music (even though not particularly my favourite kind, it fits in the game/atmosphere well) +Personal look +Tracks and environments are nice (and promising in regard to future tracks). +Price is really fair at this point. +Support the developers for doing this hoverbike game (because hoverbikes are preeetty cool don't you agree?) which is a rare genre and not doing a 16-bit roguelike platformer or a open world survival game. In the end, if you buy early access titles you don't just buy the game for what it is now, you buy it with a promise that it will get better, and you will buy it because you want to give your support. Also it is already fun to play, so there is that thing too!