Cyber Speed

This is one of the least fun racing games I have ever played. The gameplay is simple but the mechanics are badly broken. It is frustratingly difficult mainly due to aggressively cheating ai racers and the need to win every race.

The gameplay is simple. You are tethered to the race track and need to steer into the corners to maintain speed. You also need to rotate/move out of the way of the other racers on the track else you will run into them. You can spin round, go in reverse and shoot anyone approaching from behind but this is a very bad idea as you usually just end up being overtaken and you cant navigate the corners very easily in reverse. And one thing you do not want to happen is being overtaken as if the ai racer gets a turbo off, that's it...they are gone and you can never catch up to them. You do get a couple of lock on missiles to slow em down, but you got to be quick to use them. The ai don't really shoot each other up much, usually accidently as they try to shoot at you.

The most annoying aspect of all this is that if you have managed to hold them off to stay in 1st place for most of the race, they will soon be gunning for you in the final lap. here all the ai racers double in speed will attempt to jump you at the finish line. This is very frustrating as they often use a turbo as well as there double speed so if they pass you that's it and all other opponents will attempt to pass you as you approach the line.

If this wasn't frustrating enough, the game has a broken scoring system. you can be awarded 9 points for 1st place and 1 point for 6th place. This would make sense as the game has a league table to climb. However, you must get at least 3rd place to progress onto next track making the league table pretty much pointless. You cant do well in one track, have a bad round in another, then recover in the next few races to maintain a lead in the table. The constant fight for even 3rd place on every race is frustrating as it is. The only saving grace is that you do have some influence during the race to make sure the same ai racer does not win every race and take all the points.

When choosing your character, it would seem that each ship has stats that improve as you cycle through each character. Maybe this adds extra difficulty, and you would expect anyone to just select the craft with the highest stats. In practice it does not matter as even unlocking the best ship in the game with a cheat, it did not improve chance of wining as the ai racers are relentless.

The game seems to be portrayed as a tv show kind of like mega Race. Between each race there is an interlude with a random cinematic for an advert. I have shown enough races to show all of them in this video. Also, after some racers , there is a one v one bonus race against fastest ship in the game. This is surprisingly easier than the normal races, but still not without its challenge. I did not lose these races so I do not know what happens if you lose a bonus race. You don't seem to win/unlock anything for beating them.

The best part of the game is probably the music. Some nice electro trancy tunes of the era, even souding a little Amiga'ish in places, maybe the influence of the creative minds at mindscape. The gfx are really good as well with highly detailed models and textures for the track and backdrop making a good use of colour.

So this video shows the tournament mode and winning all 10 races plus bonus tracks and most of the interlude videos. Afterwards I enter a cheat to show a race with daisy the cow. I then enter another cheats to race as the mystery ship that you dual against in the bonus races. All played on normal difficulty. I could not tolerate this game on hard mode.

00:00:00 Main Tournament.
01:01:00 Race as Daisy the Cow.
01:06:30 Race as the mystery ship.