Riff Racer is a game where you drive to your music on a custom built track and perform tricks and drifts to conquer the leaderboard. The game usually is priced at $9.99 USD but is often on sale and in 2020 the cheapest it was discounted was 85% off at $1.49 USD on Steam. During this review I will be highlighting the major draws of this game like its gameplay, the amount of replayability the average user can get, customization features, achievements, and more!
(Pictured: Driving at x10 score bonus.)
The Gameplay / Game Loop
The first game loop of Riff Racer is to drive to music that either you selected from your computer or what was already bundled in the game already. The gameplay is simple, the player presses the accelerate button and drive through the custom built course while avoiding obstacles and performing tricks like rolls, jumps, and drifts. There are these cubes that the player can pick up to gain a temporary boost to catch up to the progress of the song or to boost ahead and get 10x the points of your tricks.
The second gameplay loop is to grind tokens to purchase new cars and paint jobs, From what I've played different cars do not have much of a handling difference. As for the paint job selection there is no stat bonuses awarded for purchasing them and they only provide cosmetic change (Obviously.) Thankfully there are no microtransactions so there isn't any pay to skip the grind.
The third gameplay loop is obtaining enough points to be on the leaderboard or even being on the top of it. Practice makes perfect by playing stages multiple times to find out when to boost to perform drifts and tricks to obtain the highest possible score. There is a mechanic before starting the race that allows you to drive with a ghost on the track. You can select the top scoring player to race against to see how they achieved the score that they did. Also, you can choose to race a friend that has played the track as you to see how they performed and possibly laugh at their mistakes. Additionally you can race against yourself to better your last run and fix the mistakes you made last time. Or, you can just drive solo without seeing any other car. This is a nice replayability feature that allows friendly competition.
Grinding Cosmetics and Vehicle Strategy
Personally, the best way I've found is to play long songs as they give the most score and to avoid obstacles as much as you can. Doing this will level you up and the game rewards tokens for each level up you achieve. Also if you have any songs that are unique or uncommon to the mainstream like meme songs or video game soundtracks with an ID3 tag can be uploaded to the leaderboards and be awarded 100 tokens if you're the first one to do so.
Achievements
The achievements aren't too difficult to earn as the most difficult ones require you to purchase all cars and paint packs in the game. If you have the patience to grind I'd say it's a pretty easy to complete.
Self Stats / Leaderboard Info
The leaderboard in-game provides you with very simple but useful information. 'Driver Stats' displays your current level, your favorite music genre to race to, your top song, and your favorite car. 'Most Raced' is a board where it displays the songs you have played the most. 'Tracks Created' is a board that displays what race tracks you've created. Finally, the 'Achievements' bar displays your current progress on your achievement completion.
In Conclusion
I personally enjoy Riff Racer, it's a nice gameplay change if you're familiar with something like Audiosurf but not quite as customizable since Riff Racer does not have any mods released as of making this post. I highly recommend picking this up if you feel like you want to enjoy your music in a fun way.
