Giveaway of the Day - Ultimate Nitro Racers

Ultimate Nitro Racers:

Today’s game was originally given away as Nitro Racers back in October last year. The developer has done some work on it to improve it for example new textures have been added for the cars and adverts along the roadside, and some errors have been fixed. There’s also a new mode called Time Attack, with the ability to race against a ghost car running at your best time; (hopefully the developer has taken into account some of the previous comments made here). Now we have ‘Ultimate Nitro Racers’ by the same developer ‘Hand Made Games. You can see the previous comments about the original game by following the link HERE.

Ultimate Nitro Racers downloads to a 36.7Mb zip file and unpacks to a notepad file and dual activation and installation file that expands to 143Mb once the game is installed (the majority of the bulk is from the game textures {113Mb} and meshes{19.3Mb}, with sound and music third with {6.56Mb)}, leaving less than 5Mb for the rest of the game file structure. The game installed to my root directory, which for most community members is probably C:\; the root directory is the hard drive where your windows installation is located. It’s not good practice to install programs directly onto the root directory (from what I’ve been told) so I’d change the installation path to something more usual such as C:\Program Files or C:\Games. The game installs to a folder called Ultimate NR. To ensure the game installs to the correct path clear out your internet cache or make a note of where it’s being installed. (It may try to install into the last installed games folder). GMMan mentions the registry value which dictates where the game will be installed. See his comment #10, by following the link above. There’s no shortcut installed to either the desktop or start menu programs folder so you’ll have to create a shortcut once the game has been installed. If you want to install a shortcut to the Start Menu programs folder there’s a tutorial in the forums that tells you what to do by clicking HERE

The Game:

The help menu lists the various controls you’ll use during game play. Apart from menu selection which is accomplished with the mouse, everything is controlled by the keyboard. The keys you’ll need to know are movement keys, your nitro button, re-spawn, handbrake and pause;(when I did my first race I’d forgotten about this one and was wondering how I was piped at the post . The cars seemed to pass me with excessive acceleration, lol). The options menu contains only the sound and music sliders.

To win the game you have to complete 10 races. When starting a new game you are asked to create a profile, then you click on the continue button that takes you to the Nitro Racers selection page where you can choose from Competition, Quick Race or Time Attack. The quick race has no time limits or points awarded so you can’t unlock the various cars that are available. The quick race is basically for familiarization and practice for the competition. The time attack mode allows you to race against a ghost image of you best time around the race track though this wont be activated until you’ve made at least third place in your first race. Apart from the first race track (Forest Park) all other race tracks of which there are five in total are locked in Quick Race and Time Attack until you’ve unlocked them via the competition mode. (It may be possible to edit the game files to unlock all the tracks and cars). You can scroll through the race tracks, but until you’ve attained third place or better each new track will remain locked.. The only track unlocked is Forest Park the first race track. Once you’ve selected your track you can select your car. Although there are only five different race tracks there are teen different races. Basically you run each circuit backwards.

To unlock each successive car you need to earn points:, (see the list below for details) It’ll take you at least two races to unlock the first un-lockable. After watching the video (see below), I couldn’t see any difference between the three race tracks that were used and I never got to the stage where I could unlock a new car so can’t say whether each car has different performance or handling properties.

Significa…………Free
Celest……………1200 points
Thunder……….….2500 points
Serpent…………..5000 points
Cerberus………….8000 points

The game is better than some racing games I’ve come across over the years. It looks decent and the cars handle reasonable well, though going around corners can seem a little jerky. You can drift around corners by using the hand break (Left Ctrl). Competing cars seem to race off at the beginning way too fast. The video I’ve linked to shows you the game play. Hints are flashed up near the bottom of the screen. Also there is a tendancy for the cars to either force you into the track sides which sometimes stops you dead, or the cars create a pile up.

To pick up fresh nitro reserves you have to pass over one of the blue areas on the race track.

When playing time attack, to be able to race against your own ghost car you need to win a race or come second or third.

This is an improvement on the last racer we got from Handmade Games. Ultimate Nitro Racer is definitely more challenging than any of his previous racing games; though it’s definitely not perfect. The game play runs relatively smoothly enough apart from the jerkiness around corners, and whatever bugs were preventing me from taking screen captures when the first version of this game was given away seem to have been fixed becasue I had no problems taking screen captures of the game this time .

I was able to navigate around corners better than the previous game, but that could be because I’ve played quite a lot of the latest Need for Speed game which helps you around corners with warnings about speed (via color coded arrows). It’s got me into the habit of breaking before entering a corner to reduce speed, where previously I’d just go for it, In my first race I managed to keep an average placing of 3rd place and even got into first place for a brief spell, but I forgot about the nitro option and soon lost ground, I though I was going to at least hold 3rd place right up until the end of the race but just before the flag was beaten back into fourth by a car that whizzed past me at great speed. In myu second attempt I managed second place.

Controls:

Movement keys:

• Forwards………………….Up

• Brake…………………..…Down

• Left………………….……Left

• Right……………….……..Right

Other Keys:

• Nitro…………………………..…..Left Alt

• Respawn……………………..…….R

• Handbreak…………………….……Left Ctrl

• Pause……………………………….Esc

• To Drift……………………………Left Ctrl

Images and Video:

You can see several screen captures HERE Unfortunately the game kept crashing when I took screenshots and I had to use Ctrl, Alt, Delete to restart my computer, so you’ll only see 6 images, however there’s enough to get an overall impression of the game. The following You Tube video I found is of the original Nitro Racers, so doesn’t show the new textures, however the basic game remains the same so should help to strengthen your impression of the game. You can see the video HERE

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Conclusion:

I think Ultimate Nitro Racers is Handmade Games best racer to date, though there is still room for improvement if the developer wants to compete with similar budget titles, for example you can buy games such as Clutch an interesting Zombie racer on the lines of Death Race 2000 or a futuristic racer called Metal Drift that’s available on Steam for around the same price as today’s game. There are several games available via Steam in the same price bracket as Nitro Racers but all have something additional to just racing a car around a track such as the ability to cause damage to the vehicles if you crash, or in the case of Clutch that I mention above, a mission based story line. Also, there are better freeware racing games available, for example CLC Dream Test Drive and BMW M3 Challenge, both of which look a lot better and feel better. However my advice would be to go get Trackmania Nations, which is also free. It’s got better graphics, a better feel, the ability to create your own race tracks plus there’s a massive online community who have created hundreds (if not thousands) of new tracks that are available for download free. See below for many more alternatives to today’s giveaway. Don’t get me wrong, I’d try today’s game to see what you think, all the games I’ve mentioned have something to offer, whether it be ease of use or something different in the way they play. You can always delete it if you’re not happy with it. There’s no uninstaller so make a note of where you install the game so that you can delete it later. There’s no registration data inserted into the registry and you wont find it in the add/remove programs list. The game is free standing which means you can play this from a flash drive or even a CD.

I did find the AI a little aggressive with respect to the robot cars forcing me into the sides of the race track. On many occassions I lost a race becasue of this. you can see from one of the images above and the one below that the cars had a habit of piling up:

I’d score Nitro Racer 6 out of 10, an improvement on my original score. After persevering with the games foibles I actually like the game and am tempted to give it a 7, but I still don’t thinck its worth that yet. However, I’m a little biased because I have around 50 racing games, all of which I’d rather play than today’s game.

To the developer, my original suggestions stand for this game, that is, you really need to add something to this game that’ll make it stand out in some way, (for example give it a post apocalyptic setting or add power ups to make the game more appealing. As it stands there are too many cheap racing games out there that offer some of or all of the above. I’d also create a web page where we can go see your products. You’ve given us quite a lot of games over the last year; some of which I’ve still got (all the space orientated ones). I do think there’s a lot of room for improvement yet. Your games are certainly getting better, but they are not quite there yet. (IMO). Thank you all the same for giving these games away, it’s much appreciated.

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Other Information:

Control Issues:

If you find the controls are not to your liking, you can edit them by opening actions.cfg and changing the values. For example (bswarm posted this Comment #17 via the link I’ve provided to Nitro Racers above):

Example change…
up;move_up;Up;false
to
up;move_up;Space;false
to make the space bar the accelerator.

Music:

If you want to change the music you’ll find four MP3 files within the data folder inside a separate music folder (called Level1, Level2, Level3 and menu). You can just make a straight swap and replace the four files with your favourite music. Though you may have to change the names of the files you exchange the originals with to the ones you are replacing. I suggest backing up the files just in case you want to revert back to the original music.

Alternative racing games:

I think a large chunk of the community is going to be disappointed with today’s racing game, so I’ve posted links to Gametop, which have at least 10 racing games for free, some of which, such as ATV Quadro Racing are half way decent. There’s also at least another 10 online racing games.

Good news for those who miss today’s giveaway, the original Nitro Racers was added to Gametop’s list of games shortly before it was previously given away, and is permanently available for free. Do take care when installing though because it does ask if you want your browser to be directed to Gametop. The box is ticked by default, so don’t blindly click on next. If you do accidentally have your browser hijacked it’s a simple enough process to return it back to normal. Just right click on your internet icon and select properties. Near the top you should see a button that allows you to revert back to your default home page, or type in the one you want, for example http://www.google.com

You can download the original version of today’s giveaway ‘Nitro Racer’ for free (full version) HERE

Then there’s the Wheeled Games thread that includes such classics as Trackmania, which is probably the best freeware racing game available to date, plus loads more games such as Death Rally, Ignition, ReVolt, over 50 flash games, Darkwind, Trackmania Nations, Driving speed 2, BMW M3 Challenge, and a few HERE Finally, you’ll find several decent racing games via the free games synopsis, some of which are actually really good. There’s one online game I highly recommend called Darkwind.. And others such as Bunny Speed, Chase HQ2 Evo, CLC Dream Test Drive, Driving speed, Gene Rally, GLTron, Grand Theft Auto I & II, Ludo Race, Nuclear Motocross, Project Torque (online game), Ragtime Racing, Retro Racers, Stunt Playground, Sunday Drivers, SuperChix 76, Vortex, 3D Game With a Guy Flying a Pedal Plane. Click HERE to search the free games synopsis.

Not forgetting Gametop games. You’ll find the following games available HERE
for download from Gametop; they include Real Racing, Mad Truckers, KBG Hunter, Monster Truck Challenge, Street Racer, ATV Quadro Racing, City Racing, Extreme Racers, Mad Racers, Star Racing (my favourite from Gametop), Crimson Road

Then a few more HERE from FreeGamePick:

A word of warning when installing any Gametop or FreeGamePick game. They are increasingly including toolbar and browser hijack practices, thankfully these can be avoided by un-checking the appropriate boxes during installation. All Gametop games do open up your internet browser when you close the game down, but this isn’t a browser hijack as your home page isn’t changed and once you click on the X, that’s it.

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Commercial Alternatives:

Finally……If you have some spare cash my advice for purchasing a racing game would be to get one of the latest games called Fuel, Dirt 2 or Need For Speed: Shift The former has loads of different vehicles ranging from bikes and cars to trucks and ATV’s. and Shift has many high profile sports cars to choose from. In Fuel you get to drive around some of the most beautiful areas of the U.S. The developer has used satellite imagery to recreate areas such as the Grand Canyon. There’s over a 100 000 miles of road and track. to explore and 500 000 square miles of ‘off road racing’. If you’re looking for something a little cheaper Need for Speed Carbon or Test Drive unlimited are good choices. You can pick either one up for $10 or less. The latter game has over a 1000 miles of road which you can drive around on and join various types of races. It’s a recreation of the Hawaiian Island of Oahu.

There are some cheaper alternatives available via Steam. I’ve recently got a package from 1C games that included five reasonable racing games (Death Track: Ressurection, A.I,M Racing, 4×4 Hummer, Classic Car Racing and Streets of Moscow). Oddly Steam are still selling each game individually for the same price as the five pack. It was on a deal but can still be purchased for £13.99 (approx $20)

Whiterabbit… what would we ever do without you. todays giveaway is impressive, but im still in the middle of downloading trackmania looks FAB. I do download form gametop too, and i will watch out for these toolbars

…………………….Moderator Comment……………………..

Nice one Norman, trackmania is great; and thank you, though there are loads of community members contributing to the growing list of free games that are available. I just pass on the information. Have you checked out the free games synopsis?

http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/forum/17

There’s well over a thousand games we’ve posted in the forums, ranging from abandonware, DOS games (usually requiring DOSBox to run), games that were previously commercial, but have been converted to freeware as well as freeware games. the synopsis hasn’t been updated since about week 45 (we’re now in week 72, and I need to start working on that right away) so there’s going to been hundreds more to find by going over to the Games discussion forums:

http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/forum/17