Antigraviator Reviews

[h1]Space race[/h1] Antigraviator is a game that simultaneously excites and frustrates by offering some excellent, ultrafast racing on one hand, and then smears poop all over its achievements with silly gimmicks that are ill suited to hyper-fast racing titles. This all on top of the fact there is little content on display that would suggest it is worth a curious glance at best, though with other racing games of its style hiding in the Steam woodwork it lowers its potential value even more. Antigraviator is, as the name may suggest, a future antigravity racing title that the AAA market seems to have long abandoned. While Sony’s Wipeout and Nintendo’s F-Zero seem to be ignored for far more lucrative avenues, the indie scene has been more than happy to provide alternatives since 2017 onwards. In this regard while it may seem the genre is dead to the fickle, there have been numerous titles that have stepped up to fill those super-fast gaps in the hearts of aging millennials and Gen-X players. With this in mind, how does Antigraviator stand out from the crowd? [h1]Gotta go fast![/h1] While many of the other future racers are focused more on imitating the Sony roster - either in Wipeout with Pacer and BallisticNG, or Rollcage with GRiP - Antigraviator sets its sights on Nintendo’s prime racing title: F-Zero. Here the focus is less on combat and more on blistering speed. No other future racer in the past 5 years has captured the same sensation of plunging along at 700kph down rollercoaster tracks suspended high above the ground. It provides the kind of adrenaline rush of drifting around corners, flying over hill crests or hitting loop-de-loops at speeds which in the real world would likely kill you just from G-force alone. This combined with racetracks that frequently invert and zoom along on their sides, leaving the player confused as to which way up is, all adds to the mayhem that a regular, realistic racer can never fulfil! Here Antigraviator excels and, if it were to have stuck to its “Keep it simple stupid” F-Zero heritage, it may well have been driving victory laps around the competition. It however adds elements that are not only superfluous, but also hugely detrimental. While F-Zero had no on-track pickups (at least in the first two entries, I never played the Gamecube title), Antigraviator has energy pods strewn around. These pods can be collected to give a maximum of eight energy points which can then be used for a couple of abilities. First, and quite inoffensively, there is the speed booster, giving a short jolt of speed at the cost of 2 energy. These boosts last for about a second before returning you to your normal top speed, but can be chained dependent on how much energy you hold, and they also have no major cooldown meaning if you fly through a mass of energy pods you can chain yourself along at a breakneck pace. Combine this with the fact the game has no speed cap in theory, and you can use them in conjunction with booster pads on the track means the already absurd speed can go to plaid. This may seem imbalanced but considering the track design hitting pad and boost combos is extremely risky. So far, so reasonably balanced and well thought out it seems. The second use of energy however is far more egregious, causing all the promise and goodwill built-up to vanish and the whole title seemingly faceplanting itself with such a daft design choice: The use of traps. [h1]ITS A TRAP!!![/h1] Traps here are less things that cause much sexual confusion in people and more a novel attempt at combat. While the Sony styled games throw in weapons and abilities to activate at your own pace, the trap system in Antigraviator has set areas on each track where a hazard can pop up. These range from rocket turrets targeting your ship, electrical energy pylons zapping you from the sides all the way to dropping huge rocks and boxes into the middle of the track. How the traps function is not only badly communicated but also seem to be based on if there are two or more ships in the area, where the first person to hit the button activates it and gets a small shield for themselves to provide some limited protection. Initially this may seem kind of fun, but when you consider how Antigraviator is built for pure speed, trying to navigate a racetrack and taking a corner with other racers that need to be avoided all while traveling at 500kph, only to suddenly have a huge box dropped right in your path is the kind of pain in the backside that affects all in such a detrimental way it just shoots the whole game in the foot. If anything, it seems like a random element added to such a precision game like if Quake multiplayer had players randomly explode or if during a StarCraft tournament one player’s resources would become half as valuable because of some random roll of the dice… it just seems completely out of place. This is made even more annoying due to the fact the sound of the announcer telling you that there is a “Trap available” is distorted with a fade in. Since the trap is first come, first served, the time it takes for the voice to finally become clear is too long in such a fast-paced game. Half the times I heard the announcer pronounce the first letter or so the trap was already taken by another driver, leaving me at the mercy of either another pile of boxes or a nigh on unavoidable rocket. Ho hum! The annoyance traps add is further compounded by the general lack of variation in game. You can take part in several racing modes, but they all have the same general tone, be it time attack, classic race, pure race (no pickups), elimination etc… All kind of fun for an hour or so perhaps, but not something with lasting appeal. There are some unlocks and enhancements to add to the ships, but the effort required to unlock them requires quite some grinding and, unless you are enamoured with what you have seen thus far, are unlikely to tempt folks into extended playtimes. There is also a multiplayer mode, and it’s pretty much dead. [h1]Conclusion[/h1] In summery Antigraviator is a frustrating game. If it stuck to the simplicity of F-Zero and expanded itself with a larger variation of track types it would have been on a winner. Sadly because of the very unwise choice to include a novel combat system it ends up being an exercise in frustration more than anything. As such Antigraviator really can’t be recommended unless you really need a modern F-Zero fix. If you don’t mind grabbing something more Wipeout styled, look at BallisticNG instead, that’s far more fleshed out and far better supported.

Broken game, looks like it depends on game servers that they've switched off. They state they have ended all development by Winter 2019 so don't expect a fix.

Traps are super annoying and can't be disabled / turned off. Devs please make this an option. When traps are going to be triggered there's no way I have found to predict the nature of the trap (some release huge blocks or boulders onto the track, some magnetically suck you into the barrier). Track design is too twisty and unpredictable. It's ok if a section of the track is this way or if one or two tracks are this way (forcing many plays for memorization) but in general it's way better to be able to see far enough down the track to plan your line or have a lot of obvious environmental markings to indicate direction and severity of corner. AI is way too strong given the above. Strong AI is fine if the player can compete, but with the traps and track design there's no way to win without devoting your life to this game and it's not worth it. Even with AI on easy in quick race on the most basic track I struggled to make 2nd place and that was basically just spamming boost and praying (aka no strategy). The ship design is good, they're quite cool looking. Environments are very pretty, track graphics are really nice. HUD attached to the ship is ok. Looks cool, but if you're looking down at your ship, you're not looking up at the track in the distance and combined with overly twisty tracks if you look at your ship hud when you need to in the heat of the race, you're going to hit a wall. Physics feel ok. You don't get the super satisfying airbrake digging in feeling when turning, but it slows you down ok. Steering is responsive and hitting barriers isn't super punishing which is good. There are a lot of positives to the game, but the traps, track design, and AI strength totally ruin the experience that could be had here. It's a damn shame. I definitely recommend passing unless they address these issues or if you really enjoy losing. Devs: please just give a no traps option or alternate championship, and create at least 2 easier levels of AI. Also consider creating a couple new track designs (even reusing existing biomes) with softer corners, longer straights, better distance visibility and predictability.

When it works and you're in a race, this game's actually pretty good, with good handling and track design, BUT -Four times out of five the game won't even load into the main menu. -The grind is intense. Upgrades are expensive, new ships are preposterously so, and you WILL need to repeat tournaments to buy anything -The combat mechanics are cryptic, don't have much of any feedback that would make killing other racers satisfying -The rubberbanding is really bad Shame, really.

A decent to good F-Zerolike AG racer ruined, and I mean **completely** ruined, by an inane "Trap" powerup system. Traps deployed by other racers tend to appear in front of your craft INSTANTLY, with almost always no way to escape. Many of these traps bring you to a dead stop while the entire pack flies past you. If you set a trap yourself, there's no feedback if it deployed, much less if it got another racer. If that sounds fun to you, by all means get this game. For the sane, I would instead recommend RedOut or Ballistic NG.

For the first about an hour or so, Antigraviator is a janky, mixed bag of a game, but ultimately still a fun enough experience if you buy it on discount. Unfortunately, the devs seem to have realised that the game would really only be 3 hours or so long, and so decided to stretch the playtime by ramping up the prices to eleven and introducing a huge difficulty spike about halfway through the game, forcing you to grind previous tournaments several times over to unlock new vehicles and upgrades for them - to unlock the second vehicle and all of the upgrades, you will need to win the (up to that point) most profitable tournament about 10 times x 4 races in tournament = 40 races. For one vehicle. The next vehicle is 10x more expensive, the rewards increase by 0.5-1x every tournament, and there is nowhere near 10 tournaments in this game in total, so my estimate is you would need to win at least 50 tournaments (so 200 races) to get the last car up to snuff. What of the rest of the game? Well, it looks okay, the physics and handling are jank AF, the feeling of speed is not really felt unless boosting, there's not that much of content, and all of the 3rd person cameras suck. Still, for a couple bucks with a heavy discount, it could have been fun little romp for a session or two. Instead, the game is absolutely destroyed by the prohibitively expensive progression. 4.9% - that's the amount of all of the players that bought this game that even managed to buy the second car, as per the achievements. Out of 100, less than 5 people managed to get halfway through the game. The DLC has two tournaments and one vehicle. It bring no real change to the game, just more of the same, and given the general lack of content for the full price of the game, it should have been part of it on release.

In the current day climate where some AAA games can earn up to 1.97 billion dollars in revenue in just the first quarter of 2018.. I really feel that a small group of dedicated, independent, people working hard for over 30 months to bring us this game deserve our money, patience and thumbs up vote far more. By down voting a game like this, you're essentially taking away a future player base and more or less ensuring that games like this will no longer be made in the future. Your voice matters more, please treat it as such. Personally, I find the lack of solidarity between the dying breed of honest, non-greedy, transparent developers & gamers a bit disheartening. With one hand some gamers happily fork over money for RNG (cosmetic) lootboxes while with the other they show their discontent, without restraint or civility, when something isn't entirely the way they want it to be. Pros: * Looks & plays great (even on a 8 year old crappy pc like mine) - no lag issues * The key bindings & trap issues are already adressed. * It makes me want to buy a new pc + an OLED TV just to increase the sensation of speed even more. * A breath of fresh air for those who don't often play racing games. * Created by a small group of developers who put their lives into this game (and actually listen & communicate with us, instead of just pretending to while they search for new ways to scam people) * 'We must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.' Cons: * (For me) the soundtrack is nothing to brag about. (The map design and graphics made me think of Tron Legacy and as such music from Daft Punk would've been amazing. Or as a game studio from Belgium, maybe they could've made a deal with Pole Folder :) ) * Releasing a game (too early) without adjustable keybindings.. gives those who want to complain more reason to do so. * I wish the negative reviews were more balanced and considerate, supporting Cybernetic Walrus & Antigraviator is the right thing to do. Unfortunately, negative votes & opinions will carry more weight for those (like me) who are are not overly familiar with racing games, see no real reason to play it beforehand, and judge fairly unknown games mostly on their steam rating. * Lifespan is unclear? * Only in my dreams does this game have a larger playerbase than Fortnite.

I'm very disappointed in what direction this game headed. It's clear the developers had talent and money to pull off something great, but they failed to understand what makes a racing game like this actually [i]good[/i]. The track designs and music are fine, but the actual gameplay is flawed on nearly every level, and I just can't recommend this game when you have competition from big studios in the genre like 34BT and Shin'en putting out much better products. The most obvious issue is the handling. It's awful, unsatisfying, and not fun. What made WipEout's handling good was that it took skill, and also because it felt like your vehicle was actually [i]hovering[/i]. You know, that "antigravity" part of "Antigraviator"? There was a certain level of momentum and drift applied to your craft in WipEout, depending on the speed you were going at and how tight your craft's handling was, and you needed to apply air resistance to keep your turning circle under control depending on several factors. It took time to get used to, but felt intuitive. It's clear that Antigraviator takes more inspiration from FAST RMX with it's wide open tracks and very stuck-to-the-floor driving physics, but it tries to act like it has the air control mechanics from WipEout when it just simply doesn't. They should have gone with a strafing system instead, something games like F-Zero, Redout and even FAST RMX have been successful with. But there are other games that have very to-the-ground driving, and they work fine with drifting mechanics like this. They [b]aren't[/b] AG racers, but Need for Speed and Mario Kart are two series that do this really well. Antigraviator couldn't even be bothered to add [u]any[/u] level of weight to their airbraking system, and their braking system feels more like a very cheaply-programmed slow down button than an airbrake. It's a single-brake system, like the alternative controls in WipEout Pure & Pulse. In those games it sucked because using dual brakes by default allowed you to side-shift without touching the stick, but you could turn it on if you wanted to (this is how my ex prefers to play). In this game it's not that big of an issue since side-shifting is done with the right analog stick. So we have one airbrake button, what does it do? Does it put air resistance on one side like in WipEout and tighten your turning circle at the cost of drift? No. Does it cause you to drift sideways and change direction after leveling out like in 'realistic' games e.g. Need for Speed? No. Does it allow you to at the very least hop sideways like in a kart racer? No! It's pointless. The brakes do absolutely nothing. There is no visual feedback or gameplay significance to them, and they provide absolutely zero benefit to the game. They should have just stuck to the strafing systems of F-Zero and FAST, but they tried to throw together mechanics from different games, and failed to understand what made each of them work in the first place. You know what this all reminds me of? WipEout Fusion. You know, the worst mainline game in that series, the one that wasn't fun to control. The one that only hardcore fans liked, and even we struggle to cope with how much of a mess it is. As a result of the bad braking system, the vehicles all handle like s‎‎h‎‎‎‎it, and keeping a good racing line is practically impossible. You will crash into walls, not because you're bad at the game, but because you literally do not have the tools required to steer properly. The best you can do is spam side-shifts and hope the cooldown on them does not screw you over, which it will. The stat balancing and ship customization in this game is questionable as well. There's very little parts or ships to choose from at all, which is really disappointing and lame for a game that is $20. And on top of that, most of the ship unlocks are pointless, because the ship with the most extreme acceleration and handling stats is a FREE DLC that you can start using RIGHT AWAY without any progress whatsoever. The stats of the 4 different ships you have aren't creative, and they don't have different strengths and weaknesses, it's just "one is best for going fast and one is best for surviving longer". [b]I can look at WipEout's teams and immediately point out what a specific team's strengths and weaknesses are, and I consider that a part of each teams identity.[/b] Going off the stats from HD/Fury here: FEISAR and Assegai are beginner class, they're 'fast enough' but designed to be easy to drive above all else. Icaras and Piranha are great for raw speed but require expert piloting. Goteki is midtier at everything typically but has wonderful acceleration, giving you a head start as long as you have enough skill to stay ahead and keep that advantage. These ships are all unique in some way. What about 2048? Qirex and Auricom have the best weapons systems in that game. And when you unlock the prototype ships, each team has their own unique gameplay mechanics. Auricom's prototype is an absolute tank but can only use half the weapons available on the track and is slow. Pir-hana's prototype is faster than the speed of sound but has no traditional steering system. These are all fun gimmicks exclusive to each team.[b][u]You know what I see when I look at the ships in Antigraviator? Nothing.[/u][/b] Sure, the designs are nice and all that. But what's the point of them? One's an all rounder, one goes fast and the rest are just somewhere in between? Nothing about this is interesting or suits more than a couple of playstyles. There's no dynamic here. It's boring. Minor nitpick, just a cherry on top: the announcer is hard to understand during races, and it hurts my ears. This game really needed more time in the oven. You had almost 30 years of racing game history to look back on and learn from, and yet you made mistakes that I've only ever seen mobile indie developers make. I can't understand how a developer with this much effort and artistic talent managed to f‎‎u‎‎‎ck up a game's controls and balancing this bad. You should spend your money elsewhere.

Until you get the 3rd ship, (though the 2nd ship shines on a few tracks) you aren't getting the full experience. This game has a few issues, wall's are seemingly magnetic and won't let go of you, uneven terrain sometimes counts as hitting a wall, and there's one specific spot near the start of Trappist Station that will stop you dead in your tracks The real reason I cannot recommend this game in it's current state is the horrific campaign "experience" which shoots this game in the foot. You are given all the tracks (half of which are just reversed versions of the original), but you need to pay credits for ships and upgrades, most importantly, the upgrades for the 2nd and 3rd ships. The problem is, these are gated behind grinding the campaign. The credit requirements are fair, except for the 3rd ship which are just insane, upgrading the 3rd ship costs almost quadruple the amount to get it in the first place. Up until the "Silver Cup" the campaign is enjoyable and a joke, its not uncommon for the AI to finish simple tracks with double digit deaths. When you get to Silver and onward, the AI's statistics seemingly don't change, they still enjoy dying, but if you keep an eye out, you'll notice something doesn't add up, You can get a world record lap, but still barely beat out an AI who has 25% less boosts than you, and died upwards of 8 times. The AI at Gold onwards is so busted, you'll seem them on a flat track, that has walls, get so much speed they fly straight through the wall to their death. The AI doesn't appear to be playing Antigraviator. To add insult to injury, the Cups require a "buy-in" which legit only seem to exist to prolong your grind to unlock enjoyment. The campaign also teaches you that the physics in this game is busted, you'll be rammed in the back, the person ramming you might fall through the ground, or you might, or the person ramming you will gain insane speed, and you might lose all of yours. It's inconsistent and frustrating. Finally, the game mechanics, they're interesting, except good luck learning them. There are no guides. There is no info. The tutorial teaches the very very basics that you could learn from looking at the controller options. There's a headstart mechanic (that's pretty much required for platinum and beyond) but there's 0 information on how to achieve it, You can evade missles....by spamming boost or something, driving behind people gives you a speed boost. These 3 mechanics have 0 tutorial or even a load screen tip (the missle one has a load screen tip, but it doesn't really tell you what you're supposed to do) If you get to the point where you have all 3 ships, the upgrades you like, then this game becomes something else, going for world records in time trial has been some of the most fun i've had in racing games. The problem is the road leading to the fun is long and miserable. Until the devs rework campaign to be enjoyable(or just remove it and remove credits), offer a more advanced tutorial and fix the janky physics, this game should be skipped, maybe get it on sale if you absolutely think you can stomach the credit grind.

[b]At a glance;[/b] I so want to Recommend this game. Cybernetic Walrus have proven they're a hugely talented team, and they've done a great job of recitifying a bad launch. But objectively I can't. Taken on it's own merits Antigraviator is a solid game, but there are better AG racers available for a lot less money. And so for now I'd recommend you pick up BallisticNG or Redout. But don't forget about Antigraviator. Keep faith, I have a feeling it'll get better with time. And if you can find it on sale, go for it. [b] Graphics: 10/10 Optimization: 8/10 Art: 9/10 Music: 6/10 GUI: 5/10 Racing: 6/10 Handling: 4/10 Track Design: 8/10 Vehicle design: 9/10 [/b] [b]I can't hardly believe it's Unity[/b] Antigraviator does things with the Unity engine that I didn't think were possible. Played on Ultra it's absolutely beautiful, easily Triple-A level. That's taken even further by some beautiful track designs and scenery, especially the space levels. And yet it's relatively well optimized and never stressed or heated my system. As a Veteran I find the handling model disappointing. There's no Directional Brake or Drift system, you just have left and right steering and a conventional brake. It feels like a Kart game; if you've played Rocket League the steering and braking feel are kinda similar to the Octane in that. Which is disappointing, especially after RedOut and BallisticNG had dazzled me with their handling models. The racing is OK. It's not nearly as good as RedOut, but it's not as dull as Formula Fusion either. The Trap system was hellacious in the early versions, but now it actually works kinda well. And isn't a [i]total[/i] annoyance. Track design is solid, with a couple of standouts. The space tracks are visually stunning and the trap system works best, the urban tracks give the best racing thanks to very technical corners. Overall I genuinely liked this game, and I really liked the devs. But with BallisticNG offering better racing, better handling, mod content and over twenty vehicles for a quarter the price, I can't really recommend it.