In the beginning, I wonder how good can this game really be when it's a low-poly game that looks like it's made in Unity (it's actually made in the NOESIS GUI engine)? Well, let me tell you some of my thoughts after playing several hours.

The racetrack and environmental design with location-based audio cues from the drivers are phenomenal. With 8 unique drivers with a selection of 4 cars each, which can be cosmetically customized, across a beautiful array of 20 racetracks (4 new from Free DLC) with drifting controls that make it feel genuine all come together to make a truly wonderful experience. Not to mention the first time I stepped foot on the course I was blown away from the fact I recognized originally styled music from the legendary WaterFlame himself.

On the flip side, what makes this game fall flat from a wholesome racing experience is the mechanical direction of the AI. In an arcade style racer game, such as Mario Kart where items are involved, a certain aspect of your placement is based on skill, while attaining a bit of luck. When you fall behind in the race, you are rewarded with items to help you catch back up to the pack. And, when you are in the front, are only given items to try maybe help you maintain your lead. That is known as rubber-banding.

In a competitive racing game, such as F-Zero-GX, your placement is purely dependent on your skill of taking sharp corners, hitting all the speed boosts, and avoiding getting blown up by the track or other racers knowing exactly where you are both in front and behind to minimize your lap time. If you are able to lead by a huge gap, you can guarantee (unless you crash, or fall of the track) you'll maintain it. You don't have that same assurance when you get hit by repeating blue shells in Mario Kart.

Anyways, both games mentioned above are fun because they put everything together so crisp it makes sense in the spirit and style of the game designers intentions. If you want to do better, you practice along with learning little tips and tricks, and shortcuts, along the way intuitively as you watch the CPU accomplish things you didn't think of while on the highest difficulty setting.

Now back to Hotshot Racing. As fun as this game is – if you were to play locally or online without the weirdly scripted AI with their cheating techniques of always having a boost when they are behind without the need to drift, or not wanting to boost in the front of the pack so they can wait for their tailing friends to catch up – it is also frustrating with the lack of a dynamic race in any of the 3 difficulties. Where the game really shines is how the CPU can ram you, get rammed by you, or crash into a wall with their speed and pathing unaffected.

So, with that in mind, the independent time trials racing against the dev ghost times is where the real challenge comes into play. This mode let's you learn and appreciate the racetracks in combination with the drifting mechanics to achieve a new course record.