Canyon Races

Cars can perform a variety of feats nowadays, especially since they can be designed to excel when it comes to speed, maneuverability, off-road, or even crashing into other cars. Video games take it one step further, on the other hand, because they do not have the limitations of the real world. Hence, it’s not strange to see battle-equipped cars fighting for the top spot using bullets and rockets.

Canyon Races is a simple racing game in which you have a rather unusual goal: use cars to race UFOs through canyons. It may sound weird, but the idea has some merit, or rather it would have if the execution wasn’t so poor in most regards. Hence, almost every aspect of the game needs a lot of work, including the controls, level design, graphics and general gameplay mechanics.

To begin with, there are multiple cars and tracks to choose from, depending on your tastes. The cars have different stats when it comes to speed and maneuverability, but the most important factor is speed, given the fact that you have to race a flying spaceship. However, some of the cars are more prone to rolling over, which is not good news when you are constantly climbing almost vertical walls.

The races are not very difficult when it comes to staying ahead of the UFOs, but things get challenging once obstacles enter the equation. Hence, whether you have to watch out for rocks, trees or bushes that block your path, you are almost always steering in one direction or the other. This increases your chances of rolling over, which causes an instant game over, so it’s important to plan ahead.

As for the graphics, they are obviously far from impressive, but given the theme of the game and the target audience, this is not a very big issue. On the other hand, the poor level design is a real problem, because almost every stage looks the same, and there are no new obstacles to tackle along the way either. The controls are fairly twitchy as well, which makes it difficult to keep the cars in check.

In the end, Canyon Races has some things to fix before it can provide players with the fun it promises. However, there’s definitely potential, at least as long as the developers keep working on the game in order to improve it.