Driveline (Raceline) Review (Android) Please Stop Making Traffic-Dodging Games!!

That's strange. Where have I seen this title screen before?

Out of all the video games that qualify to be called racing, the term is never more loosely defined than it is on the Google Play Store. The vast majority of Unity-based shovelware on this platform seem to think that the act of racing is just a single race car driving really fast, and -if you want to get really adventurous about it- it might even have a series of slow ass cars that you may be required to Dodge at high speed. If you are a real gamer who plays real videogames, you expect a racing game to involve competition. Other cars that at least attempt to travel at a faster rate of speed than the car you currently drive. And despite today's"racing" game being released as early as November of 2017, it sadly follows the former example to a tee.

This looks very familiar for some reason. Can't quite put my finger on it.

From what I can tell, Driveline went off to a really rocky start in December of 2017. If it wasn't a slew of embarrassing typos in the title cards of the Google Play store page, it was the fact that the publisher changed the name of the game at least twice -- presumably to avoid infringing on the copyright of other games and films that shared its old names.

Burn 'Asphalts' (plural) with powerfull (with two 'L's') 'SPOR' vehicles. (What the hell is a 'spor'?)

Gameplay

Raceline --despite looking like burnout paradise-- is actually about as advanced as a tiger electronics handheld. Since every other car drives slower than someone's grandmother at a stoplight, your job is to dodge the other cars and make a lap as quickly as possible. Yes; this is yet another traffic-dodging game.

the game is separated into three separate game types, varying by track type. You have Asphalt, Rally, and off-road. (Even though you could argue that rally is an off-road mode, but whatever.) Despite this, and the game's physics being fairly interesting, the dynamics of how a car handles only really varies by the car. Tracks handle exactly the same, whether you're on an asphalt or gravel road.

the game never actually gets more difficult, either. At the completion of every lap, you have to complete the race in a slightly shorter amount of time, and after literally every race, an ad will play for 30 seconds. There are no exceptions, and you're never going to get away with just playing the game and enjoying yourself. Every time you win or lose a race, there is no escaping all thirty seconds of the ad. there's no way for you to pay to turn it off, either, the way you would in any real free to play game.

Controls:

Accurate visual representation of what it feels like to play this game.

When it comes to fancy high end physics engines in racing games, there is a certain level of sophistication expected of the controls. If a racer has to account for over-steer, tire traction, as well as velocity and wind resistance on a track, it isn't enough to just have left and right steering buttons to try and steer your auto-accelerating car like a missile from a drone strike. You need real control to offset the physics of the car, which this game doesn't give its players.

To add insult to injury, some of the car's performance -and even functionality- is way off the mark, even for an arcade style driving game. The Nissan GTO, for example, seems to be a rear wheel drive car, with a brake bias at a 60/40 split, mostly at the front wheels. This makes steering at any speed while braking literally impossible. To make matters even worse, braking seems to have the undesired effect of locking the front wheels of the car in the neutral position, meaning that the steering process has to start over soon after letting go of the brake button. To top it all off, the under-steer on these cars is atrocious.

Considering the quality of the controls, (or lack thereof,) it goes without saying that this not-racing game doesn't have gamepad support of any kind. This isn't uncommon for games based on the shovelware model.

Performance:

I normally don't add this category to a game review, but the performance of this game is absolutely atrocious when compared to what the game actually looks like. There are games more than twice this game's age that are able to run at 60fps, on a Snapdragon 410, or even an Intel's Baytrail Atom SOC with only 1 gig of system RAM. This game doesn't even look very good, yet struggles on some 8 core devices to deliver 30fps.

Graphics:

This isn't a case where a game is only designed to run on a top-tier device, because it really doesn't look good enough to justify the poor hardware support. This game is just poorly optimized all around.

The system requirements are higher than even Asphalt 8 and Assuluto Racing, and doesn't look nearly as good as those games do on high settings.

Verdict:

I almost can't believe people still make games like this. This is a game released in 2017, and we already have all the typical traits of a bad mobile game, minus the unity asset flip. Bad physics, poor controls, ads you can't skip or buy off, and zero gamepad support. The game is far more poorly optimized than any game I have ever seen on android, and to top it all off, the very premise of the game is misleading.