Game Review: Victory: Age of Racing

Developer: Vae Victis

Publisher: Vae Victis

Genre: Racing

Platforms: PC

Website: http://victorythegame.com

Age Rating: N/A

Free to Play games seem to be almost everywhere at the moment, or at least facets of free to play games that really should remain in free to play games. The business model’s a good idea, basically providing access to the core game and offering additional perks for a small price. A lot of MMOs benefit from such a model, allowing people to have decent go at the game without the threat of being forced to subscribe to play.

Of course, it wasn’t long before the corporate zombies who only moan ‘money’ get involved and a number of these games are practically unplayable when played free, or people who pay get stuff that basically destroys the balance of the game (such as a one shot kill shot gun in a game like Call of Duty or Halo that can be effective at any range).

Getting back on topic before this turns into the Jimquisition, Victory: Age of Racing is another entry into the ever increasing ‘F2P’ market, with a unique selling point of it being the first ‘Massively Multiplayer Online Racing Game’, but it’s got more in its favour then that.

If I was going to list the features I would have in my ideal racing game, it would include some of the things Victory has. Customisable cars, check. Realistic but not overly so car handling, check. Unique and challenging tracks, check. Total realism with real world cars and tracks is all well and good, but give a person’s imagination free run and you can get something as good, if not better. Need For Speed 2 had some pretty awesome tracks after all and they were all fictional.

Speaking of fictional, Victory comes with a story for no particular reason. Decades into the future, mankind has given up on the regular car as people couldn’t be trust to drive without killing themselves and started using computer controlled cars. It seems in that time, everyone who would buy a super car mysteriously died out and all the car manufacturers went out of business and racing was abolished, so the Swiss probably took over.

Thankfully, the tyrannical Swiss (don’t worry, they didn’t really take over in Victory’s world) didn’t kill off all those who love to race and an underground racing league sprung up, which is where you come in as a driver.

When you start the game, you’re

given access to the Rookie class of cars, which you can customise by choosing between a selection of nose cones, cockpits and engine covers/exhaust pipes before painting them, all of which is purely cosmetic. You level up as you race, receiving XP and credits after each race, grand prix or time trial event (the latter two giving the most), allowing you to upgrade your cars and unlock the Semi-Pro and Pro cars, which resemble 1970s and modern F1 cars respectively. Each class of car has its own style of handling, with Rookie cars easy to drive, Semi-pros being quite tail happy (ie slide a fair bit) and the Pro cars being extremely fast and difficult to keep under control.

The game currently has fifteen tracks to race on set in three different environments, they being an Antarctic research station with plenty of fast and tricky corners, a European inspired town with cobble roads and fishing village and a desert station. They’re all quite challenging, even the simplest circuits have intricacies you need to master if you want to be able to compete.

Being a Free to Play game with RPG elements, new players will always be at a disadvantage against higher level players who’ve been able to upgrade their cars. If you play for free, you level up slower and have to pay more credits to paint your car (with fewer options as well) and buy upgrades, but in terms of actual car performance, there isn’t any difference between a free playing user and a subscribed user with equal level cars, though the subscribed user has access to more pieces when building their cars.

The game’s technically still in beta, but seeing as Vae Victis is asking you to pay to subscribe they get judged like everyone else, so it still has areas it can improve in. While it runs well, the graphics engine needs some improvements to add working wing mirrors and increase the draw distance (scenery regularly appears about 300 meters ahead of you), increasing the number of cars per race as well as improving the lighting engine a bit to go with the nice little details already in the game such as the GUI shacking as your change gear or go off road, but the basis of the game is solid and I’m certainly looking forwards to seeing how the game does when more people start playing.

Verdict: Play