Aqua Moto Racer 3D (3DS eShop) Review

With a title like Aqua Moto racer 3D you can imagine my reaction to this when this came across my desk, just kidding I don’t have a desk also this is an eShop game… Ahem anyway, it was not one I was looking forward due to a flood of generic terms  in the title trying to get me excited – my other though was I should buy a desk.

I will just come out from the start, this is not a bad game by any means it’s just not great. Everything is playable and (somewhat) functional and at least feels to have a great bit of soul behind it – my issue is that this feels like an arcade/launch Playstation game from the mid 90’s, this wouldn’t be a bad thing if it was one of the classics like Dayton USA or Virtua Cop but this is clearly in the forgettable range of games.

So to the specifics of it all, Aqua Moto Racer 3D is the latest creation from Zordix games and follows in the wake (I love puns) of games like Wave Race as a water based jet ski racer and while it’s a reasonable enough addition to the 3DS library if you are after some quick racing action – this is clearly not in the same calibre as any of the Wave Race series to be perfectly blunt.

The main meat of the game is the championship mode that see you going through 7 rounds of races with 3 races in each event, each one a little harder than the next. As you race around the tracks you collect money from either grabbing it on the track or doing a trick off a jump using the touch pad to select which stunt that you wish to perform, it’s all fairly trivial to be honest but provides a little extra to just vanilla jet ski racing. As you earn and collect cash you can eventually buy upgrades for your jet ski to allowing you to potentially have a fighting chance in the later events, beyond that there isn’t much more to the core gameplay.

The handling is snappy and responsive but never all that exhilarating, the courses are somewhat varied but never overly challenging and then there is the issue that the main championships are over far to quickly to ever let you get really invested in this title in any meaningful way. This is just one of the many bizarre dichotomies that this game provides. It starts to find its feet but then it suddenly feels like nothing is really complete or entirely thought through. Despite being an on water game the water physics never really come into play, the waves are small at best and don’t really affect to control and handling other than in a very minor sense.

The courses are varied in-terms of structure but never really strike themselves out as anything remotely original, it can be hard to make race courses feel as unique as a game like Mario kart but occasionally there is one or two that make the cut, sadly not in this game. The courses may look varied and challenging at first but after one or two laps you will have figured out any tricks that the courses have if there are any.

The visual are fairly solid to a degree, everything is colourful and crisp – the detail on the environments is very pleasing and everything moves in a fairly convincing fashion. Everything feels like it complements each other which is a nice touch as there are no elements that specifically stand out to cause any grief to the overall ascetics, up until this point the visuals don’t really cause any issues. That is until you consider the frame rate. Zordix set out to deliver a reasonable experience on the visuals front and while they aren’t the best I have seen neither are they the worst. The engine just doesn’t seem terribly optimised for the platform which in turn makes your poor little 3DS struggle to keep up with the task. Playing in 2D mode the game runs smoothly enough to keep it playable most of  the time but in 3D it can become practically unplayable especially when in a pack of other riders through up water effects everywhere. This is a perfect example of developers favouring visuals over playability and it is something that personally I feel should never be done.

Audio is also a strange area, the vehicles all sound fine but the music is an odd mix. To put it bluntly, it sounds like it was ripped directly from Sonic 2 on the Mega Drive. It somewhat  matches the theme of the game but it also sounds cheap as a whole not just in audio quality but because it’s so generic. I know eShop games don’t have great budgets for things like this but it doesn’t hurt to have something that will keep you humming along rather than just cheapening an experience that was already a bit weak.

If this was a launch game on the Playstation 1 it would fit in perfectly and be heralded as a some what original title but in this day and age it just doesn’t cut it. Maybe there wasn’t enough development time or there just wasn’t enough inspiration to make this title make the jump to the next level but there just isn’t enough here to keep most people interested pass an hour or two. Unless you are desperate to experience a water based racer on your 3DS I would advise against this title as you can spend your cash in much better ways on the eShop.