AiRace Xeno review

Not exactly the best racing game ever

Review written by
Garrett Thomas

June 29th, 2014

Having never played an AiRace game before, I was hoping that AiRace Xeno would get me more interested in the series than I initially was. However, after playing through the game, I felt no more compelled to get into the series than before. While the core premise of the game is solid, AiRace Xeno suffers from a severe lack of content.

AiRace Xeno has you speeding through nine different tracks in three different jets. Your general goal is to race around the tracks in a certain amount of laps and see how good your time is while quickly avoiding any obstacles in your way. Crashing deducts three seconds from your overall time.

....And that's pretty much the entire game.

The only time AiRace decides to do something different is with its sixth course, which strays away from the time attack play style of the other tracks and instead opts for a more survival-like mode. You simply see how far you can go before crashing three times.

Naturally, the game will start to get old fast. There are no extra modes, no customizable vehicles, no multiplayer of any sort, not even any AI players to race against. All you get is the nine tracks that aren't substantially different from each other, three jets that feel like they play no different from each other (and you can't even choose which one you want to race in anyway - it's determined depending on which track you select), time attack for eight of the courses courses, and survival for one. Oh, and there's an online leaderboard. Woohoo.

This content issue is what harms the game the most, as the game itself does function decently. The sense of speed is great, and the jets feel responsive. Graphically, the game doesn't look bad, but it's not too impressive, either. The soundtrack is very dub-step inspired, so depending on your music tastes, you'll either love it or you'll hate it.

Those of you who are craving an insanely fast-paced racer on your 3DS won't find much to regret if you choose to miss out on AiRace Xeno. While it does nail down a nice sense of speed, it also fails to offer anything worthwhile that will have players coming back for more.