Xenon Racer

 Xbox One
Xenon Racer Image
Metascore
61

Mixed or average reviews - based on 6 Critic Reviews What's this?

User Score
6.3

Mixed or average reviews- based on 22 Ratings

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  • Summary: It's the year 2030, the era of flying vehicles. A one-off championship for wheel based vehicles has been organised, with cutting-edge electric cars boosted by Xenon gas. Drift through cities like Tokyo and Dubai as fast as you can and claim eternal glory!

    Get behind the wheel, keep your    It's the year 2030, the era of flying vehicles. A one-off championship for wheel based vehicles has been organised, with cutting-edge electric cars boosted by Xenon gas. Drift through cities like Tokyo and Dubai as fast as you can and claim eternal glory!

    Get behind the wheel, keep your adrenaline in check and drift through the streets. Boost to absurd speeds and become the ultimate Xenon Racer!    … Expand
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Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 0 out of 6
  2. Mixed: 5 out of 6
  3. Negative: 1 out of 6
  1. MondoXbox
    Mar 25, 2019
    74
    Xenon Racer is an adrenaline-filled and enjoyable arcade racer with lots of contents, but doesn't bring anything new on the table and feels a bit dated, lacking enough innovation. It's however advised to anyone missing a good Ridge Racer-esque experience on modern consoles.
  2. Hardcore Gamer
    Apr 1, 2019
    70
    Xenon Racer is a good game that so desperately wants to be great, but it falls short in too many areas to reach that status. Cars feel a bit too weighty while tracks lack life due to low-quality trackside details. The game’s tough learning curve won’t be for everyone, but does offer a greater sense of reward than most games when it comes to making a victory feel like a true accomplishment. Unfortunately, visual problems and a mundane soundtrack hurt the overall presentation. The end result is a game that comes as a mild recommendation for racing fans until some of its issues are hopefully fixed with patches down the line.
  3. Generación Xbox
    Apr 10, 2019
    68
    The content of this game is somewhat scarce, but its arcade gameplay, the variety in the customization of automobiles and the multiplayer, make it a good game.
  4. ZTGD
    Apr 17, 2019
    60
    I felt like Xenon was love at first sight. My first 4-5 races were absolutely a blast. Then the warts start showing up and really ruined the experience. I love arcade racers, and when one doesn’t deliver I am not happy. Especially in today’s world where the genre is so dormant seeing a game with so much out-of-the-gate potential stumble before it gets started is such a bummer. Perhaps they will stick with it and patch out some of these issues, but the window for success could be long gone by then. I really wish Namco Bandai would bring back Reiko Nagase and the glorious Ridge Racer series. The time is finally right.
  5. TheXboxHub
    Mar 29, 2019
    50
    If you’re after a racer, then maybe head towards one of last year’s many releases, you know, like the incredible Forza Horizon 4. As for Xenon Racer, it doesn’t match up with modern racers and is sadly one that will probably be forgotten pretty sharpish.
  6. XboxAddict
    May 15, 2019
    45
    Sure, if futuristic racing is your absolute happiness and joy, then obviously you’ll probably enjoy the aesthetics alone, but for everyone else, there’s more frustration than fun. Xenon Racer is trying to be Ridge Racer though looks like it’s two generations too late and is topped off with terrible drifting controls and unbalanced difficulty from the get go.

User Reviews

Write a Review
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2 out of 5
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 5
  3. Negative: 3 out of 5
  1. KurtKnispel
    Mar 18, 2020
    10
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. [Several inconsistencies, but acceptable for a 1st edition. Once passed the 2 first races, the game becomes cool.]

    I first acquired this game on Nintendo Switch, where the handling renders the “Easy” mode rather difficult.
    The, making the statement of the better frame-rate on XBox One, I bought it on this platform; je game is far better maneuverable there, in part due to this state of affairs.

    Once acquired the best car of the game, which is the WPL01-Performance, the championship goes easily on; good drifts, rather “generous” (warning about the speed loss, as in the real physics), but manageable.

    For the purpose, this is very astonishing that the WPL02-Performance, which follows as a car, be less performant. It is customisable with maximum acceleration and speed, but become in such un-manageable, and this, whatever the circuit, even on the Shangai Oval auto-drome.

    -And the car having 100% drifting, sadly is there no drifts contest, even in free mode.

    In the continuity, the performances were not measured, but most often announced instinctively; are frequent these times when cars with 50% handling are less manageable thant cars with “0 handling”.

    We wonder a few, too, about the differences between intensive boost, and durable one, or one the speed differences, all slight.

    The parts upgrades sometimes make losses in performances.

    -I find the graphisms good; the cars design are exact, without aliasing, and the very coloured aspect renders the drive more accurate, and is fun.

    Once we reached the “cruise speed” in the gameplay progression, the game becomes rather addictive.

    -About rather bad points, the presence of the garage and of the waiting room, making doubloon, although menus details in submenus could avoid the disturbing futility ofr the newbie.

    -Points very negative:
    -Absence of any global map before the race, thus impossible to study the way before, with precision;
    -Absence of registered chrono in the championship races; if we beat a record, we have to pass through the XBox video recording (fastidious, on the several attempts), and the visual estimation of the chrono until the 10th of second, instead of the 100th, available in on-line comparisons.

    It seem that the online mode loads the race on the host platform, what, in case of synchronous confrontation, the invited suffers enormous lags, preventing from a convenient race. And it took me a while to understand that we could achieve the 10th rank on-line (rather rapidly) even in playing alone. Despite “No session found”, it was sufficient to choose “join rapidly”.

    -The on-line comparisons with our comrades send our chrono with a delay… when they are sent (and received).
    The asynchronous presence of the ghost of a better competitor could be a very cool mean to learnt better.

    Besides, I like allot the touch of humour with the last won car in the championship, (as a pushchair, lol), and, in the end of the credits, the mention that no fruit was mistreaten.

    Ah, at the final to the championship, they pushed all their means, and we see it; we have all an animation, firstly seen from a drone, which we think never can be beatable, and this is accompanied by a description of a sublime woman voice; only sad that we do not see the situation of the drone on the map of the race, which is depending on an obscure trajectory, which doesn’t match the race for our car.

    The introductions, warnings, and encouragements of the normal commenter constitute a nice motivation.

    -Depending on my subjective point of view, the less good points, rather numerous, are due to the fact that the game is new. But I appreciate its originality, and its physics, on XBox, once passed the beginning, which let succeed all the championship in Difficult mode.

    The option of weapons could be cool.

    As it is about a 1st edition, and as an encouragement, I choose the maximal notation for the XBox version; I could notice a little less the Switch version, but the low performances there is rather due to this second platform, as it is seemingly the case for other games (as Grip).    … Expand
  2. Xbox_Alive
    Mar 28, 2019
    8
    In Xenon Racer the presentation of the visuals and sound by MonsterCat made the a la ridge racer style racing and drifting that much moreIn Xenon Racer the presentation of the visuals and sound by MonsterCat made the a la ridge racer style racing and drifting that much more enjoyable. I was pretty excited to get started on Xenon racer as Sodesco has a long history of making good games, backed with a powerful sound normally present in this genre. The difficulty of this game is a bit extreme, but thankfully the lower difficulty settings made me feel relaxed and enjoyed the variety of ways to drift and control your vehicle. The presentation is stunning to say the least while I would have liked to have seen more vehicle customization options, I thoroughly enjoyed what the visual and sound design brought to the table. The racing controls have the right feeling, tight and responsive with a fluid frame rate, and pack a lunch for your racing hunger. Xenon Racer is fun and enjoyable with plenty of upgrades for you to unlock. The game AI is unforgiving just as well as the ridge racer series, so be prepared to practice and I fully recommend playing on and easier difficulty to get use to the controls and get use to the tracks. While the AI is difficult It never felt Mario Kart in the way you could be half a course in the lead and one wrong move you were passed by 3 competitors. What is here is an over the top visual audio arcade style racing feast. Nice work Sodesco and MonsterCat. Looking forward to what's next.… Expand
  4. Broyax
    Jul 7, 2020
    2
    Ce petit jeu de course indé qui ne casse pas trois roues à un canard à roulettes tente de jouer sur la fibre nostalgique des Ridge Racer etCe petit jeu de course indé qui ne casse pas trois roues à un canard à roulettes tente de jouer sur la fibre nostalgique des Ridge Racer et vise ceux qui regretteraient cette franchise (qui remonte aux années 90...!) de jeux de bagnoles ultra-arcade !

    Comme si on allait regretter ces jeux de merde qui étaient -on ne va pas se mentir- injouables et pensés et conçus en dépit de tout bon sens le plus élémentaire, même si le prétexte "arcade" a clairement bon dos, on s'en doute, pour justifier tout et... n'importe quoi. Surtout n'importe quoi en fait.

    C'est que comme dans ce "remake-hommage", on devait déraper en tapotant les freins ou le frein à main, ce qui s'avérait complètement aléatoire et totalement aberrant à l'usage même si ici ça se contrôle un peu mieux -lorsqu'on arrive à déraper, s'entend..! Donc, mêmes causes et mêmes effets et on s'emmerde bien vite et on s'irrite aussi tout aussi vite que jadis : Ridge Racer, c'est de la merde ! et pour l'éternité, oui, oui.

    Reconnaissons en tout cas une jolie réalisation et un 60 im/s parfait (optimisé pour la X) mais une musique qui tape sur les nerfs, hommage encore à la techno japonaise des Ridge ! c'est pour ça qu'on ira jusqu'à 2. Quand même, juste pour l'effort gâché hélas ; l'arcade, c'est aussi un minimum de jouabilité, quoi qu'on en dise !    … Expand
  5. symmetriebruch
    Dec 18, 2020
    0
    it looks absolutely godawful. even 20 years ago this would have been subpar. today it´s an absolute disgrace. in quality mode you get a slightit looks absolutely godawful. even 20 years ago this would have been subpar. today it´s an absolute disgrace. in quality mode you get a slight bumb in resolution but it turns the game into a slideshow and a blurry ugly mess because the devs had no clue how to implement motion blur instead everything is blurred. it´s an arcade racer but so of course you wouldn´t expect simulation levels of realism but hat you get here is just awful. theres no slingshot mechanics no drag or rubber banding theres nothing that makes this the slightest bit fun.… Expand
  6. Katoyama
    Sep 7, 2021
    0
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Getting catch by Ridge Racer visuals, recently bought the game, but... immediately disappointed with frustrating unitutive controls, lack of content and terrible frame rate (in about 15-20 for Xbox One).
    The music only one pros side, what sometimes bring up memories of good arcade racer, but it can't save totally unacceptable game without gameplay.
    It's not Ridge Racer. Not even a racer.
    Sorry. I want my money back...    … Expand