Horizon Chase Turbo is a retro style arcade racing game developed and published by Aquiris Studios. The game was released on Playstation 4 and PC via Steam on May 15, 2018 for $20 USD. Horizon Chase Turbo is comparable to games such as Pole Position, Rad Racer, Outrun, Top Gear series, and Cruis’n series that were popular racing games in the 1980s and 1990s.
In Horizon Chase Turbo, you race across forty-eight locations around the world on 109 different race tracks from California USA, to Brazil, to Japan, etc… There is a good amount of different vehicles you can drive from sports cars to everyday cars to big vehicles like a party bus, and every vehicle has different stats for speed, handling, fuel, etc… Aside from the World Tour mode, the game features three tiers of tournament races. Each tournament is a set of four races, and you earn points depending on how well you race. The last game mode is the endurance race, in which you can choose to race twelve, thirty-six, or all 109 race tracks. Despite the name of the game mode, the endurance mode does not have to be completed in one session like you would think. The difficulty of this game feels just right as it is not too easy nor too hard to win races, making this a great game for anyone to pick up and play.
Horizon Chase Turbo supports four player local co-op play on a single screen. The game sports some nice HD nostalgic graphics with a decent soundtrack which includes some Top Gear SNES remixed music. The game runs at a crisp sixty frames per second as you race through rain and thunderstorms, or a blizzard, or a race track with a day/night cycle, unless you are playing with the unlockable Retro mode which tries to emulate the graphics and frame rate of the older arcade racing games. Using retro mode will give the game a terrible amount of screen tearing and ghosting as you are driving. Retro mode is absolutely terrible and may give you a headache if left on for too long. Don’t use retro mode, it’s horrible. Barreling around sharp turns at 150mph never felt so good. Horizon Chase Turbo offers achievements or trophies if you play the PS4 version. These range from winning every race, completing each game mode, unlocking everything, etc… The game offers around twenty or so hours of gameplay across every game mode, which is quite a lot for an indie game, and makes it feel more worth the price.
Horizon Chase Turbo is an amazing arcade racing game that gives players that wonderful nostalgic feeling of the games that inspired this one. With only a few minor nitpicks against this game like no customization or a soundtrack that could have been longer, but those are very minor complaints. Horizon Chase Turbo isn’t a perfect game, but it’s pretty close. Anyone who plays indie games, or anyone who loved these arcade games back in the day should definitely give this game a chance.
