WheelRacer Demo

Off-road terrain has always been a problem when it comes to transportation, which is the entire Earth is covered in asphalt and highways. However, there might be some kind of useful machine that could tackle any kind of terrain, although it's most obvious use would be for wacky racing competitions throughout dangerous environments.

WheelRacer is a game that took a stab in the dark and came up with a rather interesting idea when it comes to off-road vehicles, by imagining a sphere made out of metal bars, which would be able to rotate over basically any kind of obstacle. Naturally, by equipping it with a rather powerful engine and removing as much of the weight as possible, the spheres got transformed into racing machines as well, capable of reaching substantial speeds.

The game allows you to choose from a wide variety of maps, all of which feature different kinds of environments and challenging terrain to put your vehicle to the test. You also have to race against the AI, which can cause you significant headaches on higher difficulty levels, especially since they are quite capable of navigating the tracks in the most efficient manner possible.

When it comes to handling the spheres around the environment, however, things become a bit more difficult, since the controls are rather weird and annoying from time to time, even if they aim to be somewhat realistic. Hence, the steering is extremely hard to master properly, which means that every corner will pose a challenge in the beginning and you might get frustrated pretty quickly, unless you press on forward.

As long as you can go over the handling troubles, the graphics quality should in no way turn you away, since it is pretty detailed when you consider the age of the game and the environments are quite detailed as well. However, the vehicles themselves could have used a bit more work, since you can see the metal framework at all times and the model is not at all impressive.

In the end, WheelRacer certainly won't surprise you with anything, except maybe for the idea itself, although not even that is too original to begin with. Despite that, you can still squeeze a bit of fun out of it, especially thanks to the fact that the maps can be explored at will and it can be very fun to jump around on ramps when nothing can harm you.