Racer - 0.5.4.3

For a free product this is really amazing. The graphics / visual effects are comparable to a commercial product. The open concept for cars and tracks is its big advantage and at the same time its big disadvantage: You have access to a great variety of cars and tracks via the Racer community, and it's pure fun to collect ultra rare and beautiful car types. The disadvantage in this is that the developer can not guarantee a certain degree of quality here, especially when it comes to the handling of a car. Some cars behaved so silly and unrealistic that it was no fun anymore. Of course that's not the fault of the developer, some other cars had quite realistic parameter settings proving that the game is able to deliver quality fun results. I think you should not blame the developer for broken links on third party community websites either.

Some nasty bugs were fixed with the last update, like missing 3D info for certain car parts leading to big black boxes. Sometimes I had the "spinning into oblivion" bug too, which is slightly annoying, but not fatal considering the escape route via some key commands (see below). Steering the car via mouse is not so hard as I expected, actually in this game I prefer it over the keyboard. Setting up keyboard controls is easy, if you need it.

Some more useful key command tips (see http://www.racer.nl/racer.htm):

SHIFT + F: instantly reset car to last track position
SHIFT + R: instantly reset car to track's start position
0-9: switch camera view

All in all: This product is more for the kind of user who likes to "tune" his product, fiddle around and has the patience to search the necessary info out. If you really mean it you would be able to change a lot of core parameters, which requires more kind of programmer's skills. I was able to find everything necessary and I enjoy an occasional fun ride from time to time. I like it, keep up the good work :)

This is a game with huge potential. Good graphics, many of the user created cars look awesome, and the reallistic car physics work very well. However, the documentation is poor - instructions are only available online, and they're not the most useful. The instructions on how to implement keyboard controls are particularly poor; many people don't have a joypad/joystick, and driving with a mouse is not easy, so keyboard support should be much easier to set up, rather than just an afterthought.

This is a solid game though, and has the potential to be really very good. It's also free. :) Good resources in terms of custom tracks and cars too.