like F-zero with guns

10/10

Fun anti-gravity combat racing with a great soundtrack.

Looks good, runs well and has a fair amount of content for Early Access.

There's a good variety of tracks, you can customize your vehicle and there are quite a few event types.

I recommend this game if you're a fan of the genre, especially for such a reasonable price.

PRE LAUNCH OPINION

It's not Wipeout nor F-Zero, with that out of the way, it's fast. It doesn't look great, it doesn't handle sharply as other hover racers. But damn, it gets fast, and for 5 bucks as of writing this, grab it while you can.

Game currently has 3 tiers of racecrafts (each faster than the previous) and will end up having 7, it already gets going on tier 2, so you can only imagine.

It has all the classic modes you can imagine, death match, classic race, time attack and it also has a boost race which gets insanely fast.

POST LAUNCH EDIT

The new batch of circuits and game modes is AMAZING, nothing compared to the low tiers content, once you go tier 5 and up, the pace completely changes, circuits are 3 times bigger and have a lot of loops and corkscrews, different paths and obstacles to avoid.

Tier 7 reaches the 1800 km/h without boosting.

New game modes include a thread the needle checkpoint race, a deathmatch variant with objectives, a package pickup race (whoever picks up more wins) and new varied boss battles.

WARNING: THE GAME IS REALLY HARD.

The AI has been cranked up to 11 as we speak and it cannot be lowered in difficulty for now. Bots will cheat to win on some races (abnormal speeds, no apparent overheat, etc)

But. This is mitigated by the fact that you don't have to win everything to progress through the tiers. Only completionists will suffer.

I don't understand how, but they somehow managed to turn a rather good game ( Quantum Rush Online ) into a boring and flawed single player game. After playing QR online for some time, I immediately bought QR Champions in early access tu support the devs. And as usual, I regret having bought an EA game... Here are some of the obvious flaws I've encountered, I've already listed that on the forum, and other players complained about them too, but it seems that the devs just don't give a damn about user feedback :

- the menus with a gamepad don't work really well, it's OK sometimes, and other times it's a chore, almost impossible to navigate

- the mouse cursor doesn't disappear when using a gamepad

- there is absolutely no damage feedback, most of the time your shield and armor just suddenly disappear and you don't even know who or what hit you

- primary weapon is useless, most if the time you just shoot the ground because the tracks aren't made to use this kind of weapon. Also you have to push the button each time you want to shoot... when it's supposed to be a rapid fire weapon.

- "collisions" problems. And by collision I mean the hit detection of boosters and items. Sometimes you will take a booster even if you miss it by 2 meters, and sometimes you will be exactly on the booster but you're ship doesn't accelerate. Same for the pick-ups, I even saw an enemy behind me get the item I was going to take

- there is absolutely no way to know what an item does, most of the time the icon sucks, and even when you use the item, you don't really know what it did

- there is "that guy". You know "that guy" ? Almost every racing game has it, it's the nearly unbeatable ennemy that is always first, way ahead of the others for no reason because he is supposed to have the same ship, and seems completely cheated. Even when you get ahead of him, he manages to save and use all his energy at the end of the race to overtake you.

- they removed the cash. In QR online, even when you lose a race, you earn some cash, so you didn't play for nothing. It's not the case here, and the game is so difficult that you'll have to restart again, and again, and agin, the exact same race, earning nothing, just to beat "that guy". The game becomes a useless grind really fast, except that there is nothing to grind...

- stupid game modes. For example there is a mode where you have to grab packages on the track. Thing is, the AI doesn't seem programmed to do the same, so they just run a regular race, shooting each others and trying to reach the line first. And, as YOU have to kinda explore the track to find the packages, you will spend the entire race alone. It would be nearly impossible to grab the packages with the other guys around anyway...

- death race sucks. Yup, generally death races in racing games are fun, really fun. Mario Kart, F-Zero, Gas Guzzlers Extreme, it's fun. Not here. Here it's a chore, too. First, for the reasons I already mentionned : primary weapon shooting straight into the ground, bad hitbox on items icons making you miss them all the time, weapons that do nobody-knows-what, and generally useless... you got the picture. But there are even more flaws I didn't talk about. For example I noticied that ennemies don't give a damn about their energy, they generally don't use the blue tracks to regenerate it, but still they manage to be hard to kill. Also, you never know your position during a race like that : are you first with the most kills ? Where are you on the track compared to others ? Are you far behind and you have to boost to join them ? Generally, the AI manages to go really fast, using their boost like they don't have any energy limit, while happily shooting at each other to have a max of kills, and leting you far behind. They also take almost ALL the items, leaving you with nothing but useless ones, when you are already struggling to keep up with them. This makes the game absolutely not enjoyable, I re-started a death race like 10 times and the best I could do was 7th with 3 kills... IF you manage to got a good weapon that does some damage, it's generally not enough to kill a guy, you will just damage him enough to allow another ennemy to kill him...

- the upgrades we win makes no sense : why do they seem weaker than the base equipement ?

- most of the musics really suck, I deactivated it after 2 or 3 races. But the game is even more boring without it... I have nothing against electro, it's generally the norm for futuristic racing games, but those ones just suck.

Well I could go on and on listing everything wrong with the game, but it takes time and I have better games to play. I've waited for months for them to correct the flaws of early access, and they kinda did nothing ( well at least they corrected the menus with the pads... ). Too bad, QR Online really seemed to have the potential to bring back the old F-Zero and Extreme-G feeling. Seems like we're not gonna play a good like like these on PC for a long time...

A good futuristic racer needs to be fast. No disappointments here! During my first play I was blown away by how fast the gameplay moves. It took me a good two hours to place in the top 3 on the first campaign race. This racer will not hold your hand--it is meant to be hard and doesn't seem to be geared towards casual players!

I recommend this racer to anyone to enthusiasts, anyone that loves futuristic racers, or combat racing fans.

Getting a few good shots on the racer in front of you and watching him explode is a great feeling. This game offers all kinds of powerups to help with that.

Quantum Rush is skill based; there is no auto-aim or instant kill of other racers. You will need to earn your kills. Between aiming your main gun and powerups you will also need to manage heat and energy levels. If your car overheats it explodes. You can shoot your main gun all you want but the heat adds up quickly. Boosting uses up your energy and it seems that once your energy is depleted your racer moves noticeably slower.

The powerups provide a great feeling of satisfaction. The smoke powerup is one of my favorites. In most racers it seems like the vision impairment powerups don’t really impair the other drivers all that much. In this game when a racer uses the smoke powerup you better get out of the way, the smoke is very thick and will has immediate consequences on any unfortunate racer that attempts to drive in the smoke.

As you win races you are awarded with the ability to customize your car. Don’t like the main gun you have? No problem, swap it out for one that is suites your playstyle. Change out all kinds of parts to make the racer fit your play style.

The sound effects are okay but they feel a little bit hollow and more variety is needed. A game like this really needs lots of cool futuristic sound effects that have a lot of oomph, and even some bass, to them. The music tracks are also lacking, they are fairly short and don’t quite fit the tempo of the game. As for animation, some of the animations are a little awkward. Flying off a rock ramp in the desert at high speeds looks a little bit awkward, doesn't feel like gravity is working the way it should yet.

I play using a usb xbox 360 controller. I think controller will stay my preferred method of play, this feels right for a controller.

In summary I recommend this game to anyone that likes futuristic racers or combat racing games.

Update: The game is out of early access now, it's still a little rough around the edges. If they keep publishing updates then I still recommend this. It doesn't appear that they've abandoned the game they are still improved upon things and publishing updates at the moment.

Having played this since the Quantum Rush Beta(i think thats what i have on my PC), I was happy to see that this game came to Steam. Its a great futuristic racing game with alot of modifications and a good amount of different racers to use and each has their own style to racing, so its a unique experience each time you play the game. The boss battles are great as you have to use almost everything at your disposal just to beat them.

Really good game. Love the high octane feel to the game and how you have to play tactically. I played the online quantum rush and this game is a vast improvement with many different game modes like deathmatch.
It is really fun and on max settings, it looks amazing.
Also, for an early access game it is incredible and means that it is updated regularly.
Can't wait for more content.
10/10

Game is not yet functional but should be functional in a week or so, when the update rolls out. The devs are apparently fixing the menus and still working on the AI. Currently, it takes a tiny bit of tweaking to actually get the game working smoothly enough to be playable on my computer (starts in windowed mode, has major framerate drops), and the control customizations are not saved between game sessions. The menu screens are very unresponsive, and the loading screens take a very long time.

The racing feels pretty close to Wipeout or FZero. That's what I expected. I'm going to enjoy this game once it gets polished a little and has its major bugs worked out. I recommend waiting until the game is more playable before buying it, but if you want to take a leap of faith, go ahead and buy it while it's on sale. For now, I'm going to recommend this game just because it has very little competition on PC, but if the updates don't satisfy my expectations, I may change my opinion.

F-zero or Wipeout? Why not both? Why not online? Why not cheap?

Spacetracks
Spacecars
Spaceweapons
Go fast
Go FASTER
Have a seizure, and be happy with it

Gameplay and my thoughts:

http://youtu.be/vZ_2SstLa9M

I've personally really enjoyed my time with this game. It's pretty tricky but after a few medals and you start to open more parts, you begin to get familiar with the concept of each game mode on how best to approach earning the best medal. It's pretty satisfying to go back and beat old challenges and score better medals.
Great game if you like racing, some combat and repeating challenges to try and improve!

Really a great game, especially for the small price. A lot of the negative reviews seem to spawn from having Wipeout-like expectations towards a 10-euro-game. That´s just unrealistic. For its price, the game is really good.
The feeling of speed is great, and while some things tend to be a bit annoying, it makes them feel extra rewarding when you finally manage to win. This would be different if you´d be penaltied for things you have no influence on, but especially boss levels that feel unbeatable and unfair at first become very easy once you figure out the best strategy. For example, if a boss has strong forward-directed weapons, it might best to stay close behind him and overtake him just before the finish line. Or, on tight, twisting tracks, you might be able to get an advantage by using all your boost immediately so you are always one turn ahead and lock-on weapons or straight missiles can´t hit you.
The only thing the game really lacks is motion blur. But that may still come in a future update.
Overall, I´d definitely recommend this game if you look for a rather cheap, fun, futuristic racing game.

Quantum Rush Champions is worth buying if you're looking for a fast paced futuristic racing game. It may not be the best, but you can't go wrong with a 5 dollar price tag.

A video showing some of the racing and modes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDkXBQgH1_s

Follow my curator list for future early access game recommendations:
http://store.steampowered.com/curator/6856568-Should-You-Play-This-Game/

I am one of the worlds biggest 'Wipeout' fans.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qjhr1_zA7VU
I remember buying a PS1 the moment I walked into my local game shop and they had 'Wipeout' playing on the monitor. Since then I've been a sucker for anything thats 'Wipeout' related in style. To be honest I've not found a game on PC that has come close to this style/genre of racing... until now! ye, this game is by far the closest you'll get to 'Wipeout' on the PC. What a rush, the graphics look super cool, it's fast and the level design is just right. if you've never experienced a hover-racer.... what are you waiting for, give it a try now! - Recommended!

Always a sense of movement and SOMETHING happening. I recommend you have a keyboard or GC controller, as it is very much a "Balls to the walls" racing game. It's a mix between the high speed action of F-Zero and the randomness and questionability of Mario Kart.

The game is good and music is great, I play on minimum settings (GEForce 430) and get a good framerate (rarely drops below 75), but the game still looks good, and definitely plays well with a keyboard. I recommend that if you've played F-Zero (or even if you haven't but find it interesting) that you try this game. I picked it up in beta for $4 and even now, at $10, it is worth every cent I reckon.
Screenshot of minimum settings.

For those who are looking for a good futuristic anti gravity racer, this is a pretty good fix. It seems to be inspired by Wipeout rather than F-Zero due to it being a car combat, the style of machines, and the fact they have different brands of machines and each are very different stat wise and would infulence you to drive each one of them differently. Currently they have a few different challanges varying from simple single races, timed eliminations, deathmatches, and a speed mode where you are reqired to drive around the track perfectly and quickly to gain speed boosts that stack and will go away if you hit a wall. So far its pretty stable only had two crashes, lags a little at times, looks pretty good, and it has enough content to get your moneys worth for five bucks. The track themes vary from a beach, undergound pipes, a city, and space. I'd like to see an area themed around a floating city or a track in the sky in general. This game is in early access and I'd like to see much more content such as more tracks, game modes, and maybe decaling your machines.

This game is incredible. A high speed and powerful raid bosses. It's fun.

Those F-Zero and Wipeout fans looking for a decent PC fix should look elsewhere at this point in development. Though the engine is stable, nice-looking, and generally very functional, there is little depth or challenge to the movement physics, leaving even casual fans I've introduced the game to playing dull, easy races. Though I certainly applaud the developers for trying something new, the addition of heat tracking, a permanent rapid-fire weapon, and the ability to pick up and store three weapons instead the traditional one adds little to the game as they are currently implemented, instead cluttering what has proven to be a very focused and effective formula in other series.

My experience playing a number of Wipeout and F-Zero games has colored my opinion, without question, but the fact of the matter is GameArt Studio are making a game in a subgenre that has produced some of the best racing games ever created, and that's hard to live up to, no matter who you are. Unfortunately, the current state of the game, though technically solid, lacks a focused enough design to make an impression, not only in the hovercraft-racing subgenre, but the racing genre as a whole. I would be more than willing to give future builds a second chance if the design moves toward expanding unexplored elements of the genre, instead of the current design, which seems little more than "What was done before, but with more stuff tacked on."

My review is 'maybe recommended' but no button for that, as it's quite good for the GFX and sound, but severely lacking in the physics department that this game is trying to clone, there is little sense of gravity or aerodynamics in regards to thrust/turning/sliding/braking/crashing, making it feel a little rigid. so the the game is mediocre but a bit of highspeed fun for fans of the genre, and certainly not the worst clone attempt.
...also, the gamepad steering is too sensitive, rarely if ever do i need to back off on the throttle for turns, let alone use the brakes, using a steering wheel with near 90deg each way turn sense fixes this issue, but an ingame sense option is needed.

it's on a similar level physics-wise to 'hover ace' and that was released in 2002, yet brilliant physics were achieved in 1996 by wipeout 2, since that time the only games that really came close [apart from sequels] was A.I.M Racing on PC in 2007, and Fatal Inertia on ps3. it's a tough genre to crack, with flashy GFX upgrades common, unfortunately the physics may have peaked 2 decades ago...

Decent in concept in general except for some flaws.

Bosses rubber band hard. You hit everything and not miss a single boost and eventually get ~3 seconds ahead of them? Haha don't worry, they'll be right up your back-side any second now to smash you from 100% to 0% armour in no time with their overpowered and limitless weapons.

The free/basic weapons every ship has are nigh-useless and a waste of time and distraction. Should limit all weapons to pick-ups only.Destroying pickups should replenish some of your armour--as far as I've seen there isn't any way to replenish your armour aside from being destroyed.

Hard to recommend this game, it really is. It's still in early access but these games rarely fly off well over time. I really want a futuristic racer (anti-grav), I really do. But taking a game like this seriously only slaps your face.

To the devs; play and take note of the WipEout series. The closer to this you'll be, the better.

Update: 10/11/2014

Still no way to replenish armour--again, unless I'm somehow missing something.

Airbreaks are still pointless if you do more than just tap it. If you ever hold it in you'll do much more harm than good.

AI racers seem to never airbreak and seem to turn around every corner at full speed while players need to perfect the track in their mind and muscle-memory to ever come close. High-turn tracks are nigh-impossible to come first place in.

The game seems more and more to be a achieve first-place in the first 10 seconds of the race and maintain it or you'll never get it. So many times I get first place very quickly and hold it with no competition at all. Not a single thing hits me or comes close. Here I am at first place with the second racer ~5 seconds behind with all the other racers fighting eachother and keeping eachother back while I'm boosting ahead and hitting every boost.

There's no come-back mechanic at all. Because once first place has first place and gets a couple second advantage, it's over. Second, third and so on keep fightning and smashing eachother to just keep first place in first place.Not a single weapon/pick-up helps this at all. There are just a handful of close-quarter weapons.

Upgrades for your craft are too few and far inbetween. Especially since each tier has their own set of gear/unlocks. The system should be in points and you get points after every race you complete and you pick what you want to level up. Want more speed? Upgrade your engines. Want a stronger hull? Upgrade your hull. So on and so on. Not this random, rare drops that don't even seem to change much to begin with. By the time you finish a tier you have a few unlocks where some things are still stock-standard.

The basic/free weapons that every ship has all the time are awful and very distracting. Again, these really should be removed. They do very little damage and if you ever plan on hitting something, you'll be focusing mostly on aiming and shooting rather than racing. These are a really bad idea and I struggle to think of any good idea (let alone concept) as to why people would this this is a good idea, then add it in and then actually keep it in. It'd baffle me if anybody actually likes these.

The vehicles release a constant black smoke when they're low in hull/armour which constantly fills out ~90% of the track with black smoke. Makes it impossible to properly race if you're anywhere behind them since the smoke trail is very long and lasts a long time. Covers most of the width of your average track.

There's no minimap either which is another con.

Conclusion: Game is still very frustrating and painful to play. It isn't a casual game and seems as if the devs don't want for it to be. This just makes the game extremely more annoying to take seriously at all. So, game still sucks at this date. Game is riddled with cons with very few pros. Don't buy it.

There was some content patch recently. Didn't seem to do much but add some content (ie ships and tracks) I've noticed the main menu mid-race actually pauses now. Prior the race would still go on.

Also nice that the shills of the game keep thumbing this down with their alt accounts (yeah I know who you are)

This makes me want to plug my PS3 back in and play the only good anti-grav racer: WipEout.

Do note: I'll be deleting and resubmitting this review since a particular friend of the dev kept spamming the same negative comment to this game review for over a week while making an alt account every day just to thumb my review down. This kind of attitude is sickly and this is all I can do about it.

Said person is monitoring and policing all reviews and forum posts about this game and can not take a single hint of negativity for this game. A shame yet another game is riddled with devs and friends of devs that can't take critcism at all. This has never brought anything good in the long run. Only cancerous people.

EDIT: Grammar

So I played this for a short while and was a little frustrated at first due to the lack of explaination and the boring pickups (Still have no clue what most of them really do, hoping for a steam guide).
Since this is Early Access, that is of course understandable and will hopefully be addressed soon.

Once I figured it out and proceeded to the next tier it became pretty enjoyable with some highlights already.

For the price I can definitely recommend getting this to anybody who ever had fun with older Quantum Rush, wipeout, F-Zero and similar games.