Nukezilla Review: MotorHEAT (Xbox Live Indie Games)

For me, there was something invigoratingly compulsive about Road Fighter‘s inclusion in Microsoft’s Game Room. Like everything released in the shoehorn furore of the micro-transaction totem, Road Fighter, plucked from the so-called “golden age” of arcade, asks you to perfect one skill: avoiding traffic. Now, some quarter century on, Milkstone Studios are challenging gamers with the same activity.

Unlike the Burnout series, the confusingly capitalised MotorHEAT finds the player behind the wheel of a constantly accelerating car, overtaking batches of civilian vehicles for score rather than race position gain. Near-misses fill the player’s nitrous, and power-ups spin with a considered visual clarity to extend remaining time, award invincibility or boost multiplier or score. Racing vistas shift from day to night in soothing cycles, adding difficulty modifiers in the form of cramped head-light lit traffic or fog. Time extensions dwindle in stage progression, forcing the player to traverse the tenuous Road Fighter see-saw of risk and reward with daring passes and furious boosting. On paper, the mechanics feel like standard bread and butter fare, but in execution, MotorHEAT fizzes with the attention to detail of one of Konami’s 80′s hits.

MotorHEAT stands proud alongside the similarly addictive Decimation X in extolling the virtues of Xbox Live Indie Games as a nouveau-arcade for console gamers. With a surprisingly decent musical score and booming announcer happy to ape the voice work of the entirety of AM2′s JAMMA output, the absence of a rolling attract mode really is the only signifier that Milkstone’s adrenal shot isn’t a blaring seafront challenge on Brighton pier. Using a remarkable system of P2P connections MotorHEAT skirts the common issue of an XBLIG’s progress seeming “pointless”, with gradually ascending score logged and updated in real time, while pages of unlockable rewards placate those desperate for achievement recognition.

Control can feel woolly and indirect, with the car seemingly gliding over a fixed plane with the curving road moving as if a painted Mode 7 backdrop. Yet like the banana peel drift of Outrun or paint-by-numbers targeting of Afterburner‘s bounding reticule, the control scheme is easily forgiven when viewed in context of the entire experience. Collision detection for the most part is spot on, though the infinitely recurring slow-motion smashes that follow each and every fender bender have a nasty habit of highlighting occasionally iffy prang detection.

While the experience is unarguably shallow, priced identically to the aforementioned Road Fighter there really is little contest between the creaky trial and error of Game Room’s compulsive crown and the blisteringly modern arcade throw-back of MotorHEAT. While sharing Milkstone’s usual impeccable presentation, MotorHEAT stands in stark comparison to the plain, characterless face presented by their earlier titles Little Racers and Wool, bursting with a playfulness so often lacking in Indie titles. From the knowing puns of the awards’ titles to subtle but welcome additions like paint job customisation, MotorHEAT is the first title in Milkstone’s canon that exists as more than a home console flash title.

Perfect for a ten minute play or an extended boosting session, the ever present score board provides a continual incentive to better your game providing gameplay that is both utterly compulsive and endlessly rewarding.

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Disclaimer: We received the review copy of this game from the developer Milkstone Games.