A Pint-Sized Behemoth of a Classy Driving Game!
It shouldn’t be this good. I can’t quite believe how much fun I’ve had playing Super Woden GP II. Looking at the screenshots and trailers of the game, I wasn’t expecting much. How wrong could I have been?
This game has taken the single-player campaign of an old Gran Turismo game and added a new, fixed-person isometric view twist. Having played many GT games, the similarities of the structure of the home page to the circuits were very stark.
You start with a free car, which when you win races, gives you cash to buy more cars for more events. However, you need star points to unlock more events, which can only be unlocked by winning the events you are in and not just taking part.
Whilst playing the game on normal difficulty, getting enough cash to buy upgrades to win events soon became the order of the day. Much like the GT campaigns, this inevitably meant quite a grind of repeating the same events over and over to do so. The upgrades to the cars are fairly basic and consist of things like engine, chassis, and brake upgrades to increase one of the four base stats each car has. When affixed in the garage, you went back to the track to win the race.
Some events rewarded you with cars as well as money. The events to take part in were quite varied. They were found in four icons: Rally, 24-Hour, Weekend, and the Series Championships. Each event has car restrictions ranging from the maximum HP to the year of the make of the car, or a combination of other factors.
One of the issues the game has is that it wasn’t abundantly clear which cars would be acceptable for each race, and because I had to keep dipping in and out of menus to go back and forth between the events and the car showrooms, it was also a laborious bit of effort on top.
At its worst, you would grind some events to save up enough money for a car that you think is suitable for the next event you want to take part in, only for you to realize either: 1. The car isn’t actually acceptable, or 2. Even if it was, it was so outclassed by the other cars in the event that it was next to useless. Back to the grind, rinse, repeat to get more cash to upgrade or try again.
This wasn’t always the case as a lot of the time, the car you won was suitable for the next event and would be competitive in it also. It’s just unfortunate that this isn’t all the time. Add to this, and again, much like a complaint with the GT roster of cars, many cars just didn’t seem to be useful to take part in anything.
In total, there are 180 fictional cars from 9 fictional manufacturers to buy. None of the cars are licensed, but it’s quite clear by the look of them which brands they are replicas of. From Citroen 2CVs, to BMWs, Audi Quarttro to the Ford GT, the range is extensive to span the different variety of events to take part in.
The meat and potatoes of any driving game, however, is the driving experience itself, and this is where Super Woden GP II shines. This isn’t a sim game at all, but neither is it a throwaway arcade game either. You will have to master the excellent and controllable physics of the game, which vary slightly from car to car. Rally cars, for example, have excellent handling characteristics, which make them easier to flick and drift around corners than race cars.
Even at this point of the game that I’m in (about 5 hours), I’m still trying to figure out if the best and quickest lap times are achieved for all types of cars by drifting around corners rather than attempting to take traditional racing lines. If I’m honest, I think it’s somewhere in between. This indecisiveness is one of the reasons the game is so addictive as it means you may have to master or combine two styles of racing into one new one to be quick.
The AI challenge represented in Normal difficulty was quite a stern challenge too. Many races came down to neck-and-neck dives for the line, which just added to the thrill of the game.
The only real issue with the racing was it was very hard to be accurate from such a long third-person’s view back from the action. Trying to squeeze through a gap of slower cars, only to nudge the back of them and, therefore, lose momentum did become a little annoying. Additionally, hitting the barriers seemed to slow the car down more than it should, even when you just tapped them.
Each race is also linked to an online leaderboard for lap times for the event. If you break a world record time, a voice will pop up mid-race to announce you have a world record. Cars will also get mucky the more you race them and will need to be washed and have oil changes to keep them in tip-top condition.
There is also a time trial section where you can practice each track, but one glaring omission is a custom race option. This would have made it possible to drive and test some of the cars you have to know how competitive they are.
One of the nice touches the game has is that despite the game having lower resolution graphics than expected, the cars and details of the graphics were excellent. You can see the white lettering of the tire manufacturer go around on the wheels. There are also excellent weather and time of day effects.
One really nice touch is for the 24-hour races (which are just longer races that don’t actually take 24 hours to play!), where you can start a race at dusk with the car headlights on, but mid-race the weather will change so that you end the race in daylight and car headlights are off.
Another omission I would have dearly loved to have seen would have been an online race option. There is couch co-op for up to four players, which is hilarious fun, but an online option could have given this game a much longer lifespan than what the single-player game offers.
Lastly, game’s audio is satisfactory. Car engine sounds do differ per type but not a great deal. A lot of the mid-range cars especially sounded very much alike, but there are definite note changes between the deep-throated American muscle cars to the rally cars high rev whining.
At the end of the day, a lot of racing games come down to how well the game does at making the races fun and fair but also close. This is Super Woden GP II‘s trump card! You don’t mind the low-res graphics or the camera angles when each race can and normally does come down to the last lap. There were very few times I ran out in front and stayed there with ease. The balancing of the game AI and car levels was perfect, albeit only when you had a car that was competitive for the field.
Additionally, the physics of the game do represent somewhat of a challenge as well. This means every victory is very much earned and adds to the glowing pride you feel when you do win an event, especially the rally sections.
The trouble the game has is that it makes it difficult and awkward to find, buy, and even test which cars would be suitable for races. Because of this, even in just 5 to 6 hours of playing and having only unlocked about a third of the game, I’ve had to grind out races far more often than I wanted to.
However, even in such a relatively short playtime, I’ve managed to platinum the game, so trophy hunters might want to put this one down for a quick and very reachable platinum to bag.
Summary
Fun, streamlined racing. Super Woden GP II captures all the best aspects of good racing on top of a varied, thrilling yet testing single-player campaign. This makes Super Woden GP II a must-play for any petrol heads out there wanting something a little different. Yes, there are a few places where it can and does get a little tedious and repetitive, but the close racing alongside a wide variety of cars and tracks soon make you forget its shortcomings and lack of any online racing.
Developer: Vijuda
Publisher: EastAsiaSoft
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox Series X/S, PC
Release Date: 17th July 2024
