Gonna play Kinetica, which I once played on a demo kiosk in a Sears in 2001

Now I'm finally an adult with a job who can afford to buy videogames (it cost $13)

There were like 20 different largely-indistinguishable sci-fi racers that were all trying to be the next-gen wipeout/f-zero

I don't know if any of them were very good but this one had BY FAR the best box art

like how can you see that on a shelf in 2001 and not immediately desire it

This game feels somewhat notable for being the first thing Sony Santa Monica ever released

I can only assume the pitch process for this project was:
- Artist draws this picture
- Entire studio goes OKAY YES WE ARE DEFINITELY MAKING THAT

Rated T for This Robot Car's Partially Exposed Ass Cheeks

Predictably all the male cars are fully-covered generic buff robot dudes

...which is a shame really because "bizarrely erotic cyborg motorcycle bodies" is honestly a fantastic aesthetic and there's no reason to make it awkward by being weirdly sexist about it

I wish tutorials had been invented yet in 2001

man this handling is noooot immediately intuitive lol

ugh yeah this maybe gets cool once you learn the handling but early gameplay is... thoroughly unpleasant haha

it's slippery like f-zero but the way your steering influences grip feels... messy and chaotic where f-zero is precise

it's also just WAY too much stuff at once. You can powerslide and then double-tap X to boost out of the slide, which is very cool, but it only works if you brake to START the slide. If you start sliding just from turning (which happens on basically every corner) it doesn't work

there's no visual or handling difference between the two slides, except you can only boost out of one of them

so it's impossible to tell if tapping brake worked, or if you started sliding a couple frames BEFORE you braked, until you let go of X to double-tap and nothing happens

There's ALSO an f-zero-like shoulder button to "grip" that interacts with this somehow

and tricks

and boost

and powerups

and rollercoaster track design

it's a completely overwhelming number of systems to juggle while you're still trying to steer a motorcycle wearing hotpants

Doing tricks fills your boost gauge, but the trick input is "hold R1 and do fighting-game arrow combos on the left stick" which feels like complete ass because you have to like slam the stick around wildly and pray the (bad) gesture detection picks it up before you crash

The game's very clearly designed for you to be doing tricks + boosting CONSTANTLY; if you just drive a clean line through a level without engaging all these other systems the default opponent AI obliterates you

you're essntially playing f-zero and tony hawk at the same time, with a powerup system on top, on extremely chaotic and memorization-heavy tracks

it.... doesn't work

again maybe it's possible to eventually Git Gud and have fun with it but it certainly doesn't seem like the *process* of becoming Gud would be at all enjoyable

I've been comparing this to f-zero/wipeout since those are the obvious aesthetic influences but on reflection.... SSX is actually good version of this concept

no cyborg motorcycle butts, regrettably, but same concept of
- high speed
- slippery, twitchy controls
- do tricks (without crashing) to gain boost
- extremely complex track design

SSX is also p overwhelming to learn but it's still FUN even when you suck, unlike Kinetica imo

informative point of comparison: jumps

SSX has those giant red arrows, and designs tracks so you can see them way ahead of time. Even if you haven't learned the track, you'll always know ahead of time when you're about to go airborne, so you have time to line up and try a trick

Kinetica jumps come completely out of nowhere. You go around a blind turn and suddenly you're airborne, probably flying off the track, and now you've gotta mash Shoryukens on a joystick somehow to try to gain boost

until you've memorized the tracks, jumps are disorienting chaos

the idea of designing a racing game is terrifying lol; the difference between making a Good racing game and an Okay/Mediocre one is so incredibly subtle and hard to understand or articulate