Digital Foundry Gives a Thumbs Up to FAST Racing NEO

wow looks so nice ..

What does it run at? 720p? That's all my TV will output, anyway.

The game truly is amazing but the difficulty is very offputting. I wish there was some form of difficulty option in the game.

I downloaded it late last night and played it. It was really fun its challenging yes, but I have harder times on Mario Kart 8 turns sometimes. I like the colored strips that zap you slower or faster depending on the color your car is glowing. You can click the top left button to change your color to take advantage of all the boost strips. That can get pretty intense, and it keeps you on your toes for more immersive gameplay. I also love how many boosts you can get in a race doesn't take ages for an available boost. Plenty on hand through out the track collecting the orbs. Excellent game.

I'm loving this game a lot so far. I have had one instance of frame rate drops though. On a Hero mode run, while I was boosting a bunch of CPU's crashed into the fan on Scorpio Circuit haha. It was rather interesting and surprising to see that. Aside from that moment, there weren't any other drops in the framerate that I noticed.

Damn I forgot to pick up an eshop card for this. I will pick one up tomorrow.

My TV's 720p, so I don't feel cheated that they decided to go for framerate.

It really is great! I highly recommend it. It's going to be one eShop title I keep on my startup screen for a while, I think.

Played Skylanders Superchargers Racing on Wii yesterday on a 40" 1080p tv. Man I forgot how bad Wii graphics look. I told my wife we need to play it on Wii U back to back w Mario Kart Wii just to see how impressive MKWii was, b/c I'm pretty sure the Racing graphics are just a washed out mess. I did only play split screen 2 player though, it may have been a bit better on single player, but not much. Looking forward to the real l game on Wii U to race on those tracks and see what it is I'm racing on.

@rjejr I believe it's pretty much a stretched out 3ds upgrade, I got that set on the cheap as I wanted bowser as I'm getting the Wii u one for Xmas too. The 3ds one is pretty blurry as it is, no where near Mario Kart 7! Also, made me realise what good quality (most) Amiibo are, Hammer Slam Bowser is a shoddy paint job mess in comparison!
On topic, FAST runs so well, only noted one small drop myself in a pile up situation. Love the difficulty as well, just unlocked hypersonic.

Loving the game. I don't think I'll go forward with the faster leagues, but have gone onto the 3rd out of 4 cups. Some tracks are quite punishing, but simply demand that you keep at it. Online froze out on me, and wiped any trace of it on my Daily Log.

It's fun, for sure. But the lack of detail in the backgrounds and the poor resolution is shocking. It is telling that I have better looking games on my iPad Air 2! But at the price I would certainly recommend picking this up.

@Blufire It has difficult settings in the same way Mario Kart has them. Subsonic is their equivalent of 50CC, Supersonic is 100CC and Hypersonic is 150CC. Except they're all much faster than Mario Kart because that's the whole point.

Very interesting article, although it would've been nicer if they actually highlighted what they wanted to show on the screenshots (e.g. with a red circle). When I look at the caption under the screenshots, I have no clue what they are referring to.

@Blufire There is, I guess you have problems with the easiest difficulty? What exactly are the problems you experience? I could give you some advice, actually made a list in the NL forums thread (and also on reddit).
Have you ever played fast-paced sci-fi racers before or are you new to this genre?
I didn't find Subsonic difficult and Supersonic is also doable so far, but then again this is my favourite racing genre.

Bleargh, these videos bother me. Do the people at Digital Foundry actually PLAY video games, or do they just critique them based on the general gaming public's current graphical expectations? If the game looks beautiful and is fun to play then complaining about the low resolution seems really arbitrary and ultimately pointless. Also, not being able to find enough people to try the 4-player mode seems just plain sad.

@Dr_Corndog The framebuffer is at full 720p, however the in-game visual rendering is at a 640 X 720p. It's noticeable up close, but from farther away it's not as distracting.

I've been very impressed with the graphic presentation of this game. Now if I could only get a dang trophy on Neon Cup on Subsonic...

Very pretty game, great graphical design!

Dang that is pretty.

I am having a blast with the game. Any compromise in graphical output is nullified by 60fps and the incredible speed.

@kurtasbestos It's an analysis, they aren't "complaining" about anything. Did you miss the parts where they said good things about the game, like how it displayed smart design? Or did you not even watch it?

@kurtasbestos AFAIK, they 'critique' game solely on performance/graphics. I think they are part of eurogamer.

So far it's pretty awesome, except my wii u froze during a loading screen once... I had to unplug my system to fix it

'720p' low resolution.. Sheesh, people are spoiled babies with fps and resolution. I seriously never got why it's so important to have that higher before anything else. Brainwash from screen sellers.

@greengecko007 Yes I watched the video, and no, I didn't miss those parts. I'm simply wondering what the point of their technical analysis is... whether they say good things about the games or not, the way the break a game down into a bullet list of technical feats and then assign a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" based on that list seems to completely miss the point of playing video games as a form of entertainment. If a game is fun but it doesn't hit an arbitrary target number of frames per second, does it get a "thumbs down", thereby implying that it's not a "good" game?

@BrizzoUK "a stretched out 3ds upgrade"

Man I'm getting stupid in my old age, never even dawned on me that it's a 3DS port, but as soon as I read your comment it made perfect sense, that's what it looks like, a poorly washed out 3DS game. Thanks for that. I do like Bowser though, but overall if's a bad year for Skylanders, they must have changed production companies b/c none of them are as good as the trapmasters. Wait, Splat is really good, but the rest are lame. And we have about 100 Skylanders and 6 amiibo. And about 30 DI toys, which are growing on me though I really hate their look. But yeah, we got Racing for $35, so I thought it was worth it for the toys, game is a bonus, it will get played enough.

@kurtasbestos
Digital Foundry doesn't do game reviews, they do technical analysis of games. The target audience is engineers and other technical-minded people who find these things interesting. As a software engineer in games, I like to watch their videos from time-to-time, but I can still enjoy games with poor technical scores from DF. I don't think the videos are really intended for the "average" gamer, but people tend to use DF as a way to bash consoles.

@kurtasbestos
Digital Foundry doesn't do game reviews, they do technical analysis of games. The target audience is engineers and other technical-minded people who find these things interesting. As a software engineer in games, I like to watch their videos from time-to-time, but I can still enjoy games with poor technical scores from DF. I don't think the videos are really intended for the "average" gamer, but people tend to use DF as a way to bash consoles.

@kurtasbestos
Digital Foundry doesn't do game reviews, they do technical analysis of games. The target audience is engineers and other technical-minded people who find these things interesting. As a software engineer in games, I like to watch their videos from time-to-time, but I can still enjoy games with poor technical scores from DF. I don't think the videos are really intended for the "average" gamer, but people tend to use DF as a way to bash consoles.

@rjejr Yeah I've seen the odd Skylanders before and never thought they were that bad! Still.. Looking forward to rampaging with DK and Bowser at Xmas in the Wii u version, only heard good things about that... The warning sign for the 3ds/Wii version is that there is barely a review out there!

I have to admit I was expecting a higher resolution. Other than that this game is amazing in its artstyle and framerate. Maybe my eShop GOTY.

Amazing game,prefer it to f-zero. Love the colour change idea

I think this game is fantastic, it's easily the best e-shop only game on WiiU as far as I'm concerned. I'd have happily paid full retail price for this had it been released in shops. I love how fast it runs and I think shin'en are a top studio they deserve to have this sell by the bucket load.

Nice article. I still regularly play F-zero GX which has a very low res on an HD TV. Doesn't bother me after the first 5 mins, art direction is the most important factor when working with limited resources and all the best Wii U games were built with a full understanding of this. A lot of Gamecube games haven't seemed to age at all due to this awareness and technically put most modern games' performance to shame. Remember F-zero on N64 ran at 60fps! In 1997! Credit to Shin'en, makes me wonder how 'AAA' developers use their resources...

Digital Foundry is worse than IGN about graphical obsession. Framerate is away more important than resolution IMO, especially for games like this. It still looks gorgeous to me, and it runs super smoothly. With a game based entirely on speed, I'd GLADLY take a smooth, high framerate over resolution. It's still HD, and that's all that matters to me.

720p = low resolution nowadays? I see.

I can't believe people are calling this game beautiful. It certainly isn't that!

Awesome great little game imagine what Shin'en could do with a bigger budget more powerful hardware n more help from Nintendo.

For those of you put off by the difficulty, keep racing. You will get better as you learn the tracks and the cars (use a lighter car until you are familiar with the track and its "certain death" spots)

Low resolution, what low resolution?!?!?. This resolution is crystal clear.

Not beautiful? Wow, I pity anyone who cannot look at this game and consider the graphics anything but a master piece. So well done.

And just so it's not lost, the game play is excellent. Again, you have to learn the tracks and the cars. The light ones are highly maneuverable, the heavy ones aren't . . . but have speed to burn. Learning the tilt and the boost spots and not quitting on a race due to a first lap crash are all important.

Weird maybe unrelated question. But you know how some games actually tell you how fast you are going? I always wondered if that number was made up or if they were able to build world's to scale and then have something actually calculate the correct MPH.

556 MB... impressive.

But why are videos like this uploaded at 1080p?

2 Thumbs Up, pure awesomeness, for the hardcore arcade gamer.
Every game is a matter of taste, the graphics are a loveletter to arcade racers, i agree it's not the most beautifull ever, but we don't need that, as long the experience is top notch.

I love it love it love it.

@kurtasbestos If you really watched the video, you should be able to answer that question yourself. Did they say that Fast Racing Neo wasn't a fun game just because it's not locked at 60fps? No.

You don't appear to understand that the point of an analysis like this is just to see to see how a game performs. It's also helpful to get a truthful representation of performance, rather than being forced to simply believe marketing and PR crap that is hardly reliable. Meanwhile, what is the point in people like you getting your panties in a knot because a game gets analyzed at a technical level? Having more knowledge at your disposal should be a good thing.