Hot Lap Racing Review

Welcome to Hot Lap Racing, a “simcade” driving experience that has you racing the most exciting types of motorsport classes with a huge selection of vehicles ranging from the Brabham cars of the ‘60s to modern endurance cars like the Alfa Romeo 155DTM, the Renault R5 Turbo 3E, and the Peugeot 9X8. Maximum Entertainment has included a huge range of motorsport modes in Hot Lap Racing that are sure to challenge your inner driver, including a career mode that allows racers to compete against 30 of the greatest drivers in the history of the sport.

Before you start racing, you can customise your racer by selecting their helmet and racing outfit. For the helmet style, there are 24 different options where you get to select the primary, secondary, and tertiary colours. You can coordinate the colours with your suit to make a snazzy racing outfit, along with your portrait design, which is like a team logo, by visiting your profile on the main menu. Here you can also see your racing statistics: how many kilometres you have driven (I never saw an option to change to miles), your most played track, which car you have used the most, the number of races that you have completed, and how many times you have won, along with any trophies that you have earned.

Once you are suited up, Hot Lap Racing has a variety of modes available to play, like career; hot lap, like a time trial where you are trying to get the fastest lap time; quick race; and championship. Before you begin your career, you will have to learn the basics of driving and complete the Bernier Challenge to prove that you have what it takes to be a racer. The first exercise will teach you how to brake, so your goal is to stop in the finish zone in less than 10 seconds. This sounds incredibly easy until you accidentally hit one of the other buttons that is not for the brakes, or if you drive off the track onto the grass. If either of these happens, you will have to restart the challenge again. The game is very serious about what actions it wants you to take; touching the gas or steering when you are supposed to be braking is going to end your run incredibly fast. It took me a lot of attempts to figure out that as long as you are hitting the one button that the game asks for, you will be able to continue. I am so used to other racing games that aren’t nearly as strict as this title is.
While on the track, there is a green path displayed that you should follow, showing you where to go. This will help you avoid obstacles like traffic cones and barriers blocking off sections of the track. Like hitting the wrong button, if you hit any of these, you will have to start over, so that can get pretty frustrating. This training mode is incredibly unforgiving, which is surprising since you are just learning, and you would think that it wouldn't be as difficult as it is right from the very beginning. In other racing games, as you progress, it becomes more challenging.

My favourite mode to play in Hot Lap Racing was the time challenge, appropriately called Hot Lap. Here you get to select which of the licensed and custom tracks (17 available at the time of this writing) with 70 different layouts to pick from, including courses like Laquais, Navarra, Circuit de France, the Gingerman Raceway, and more. Once you have figured out where you want to race, the next decision you will need to make is what car you would like to drive, from the seven available at the start to the 50 that will be available as you progress from as early as the ‘60s to more modern cars like the Ligier JS P320. There are some really fancy vehicles in here to try out! You will spend a lot of time trying them all out, deciding on which one is your favourite to drive.

Once you start racing in Hot Lap mode, you will complete lap after lap, trying to get the best time that you can. The game is more forgiving here than when you play the tutorial, as you don’t have to start over if you have to drive off the track onto grass or gravel, but keep an eye out for those traffic cones because once again, hitting those instantly ends your run.
When you are in the main menu, or at any point in the game if you pause, you can go into the gameplay settings and change your car's transmission type between automatic and manual, and you can also change the camera type between rear, far rear, bumper, hood, and cockpit. I found it easier to see the track in front of me and where I had to go when I selected the far rear angle, but the cockpit view makes it feel like you are actually driving the vehicle, so it all depends on the experience you want.

I played Hot Lap Racing on the Nintendo Switch, so the visuals weren’t super realistic like those you might see in other racing games like the Forza titles. But they were still surprisingly nice, and they looked really good while you were driving. The only tricky part was that if you were playing in handheld mode, it would be a bit tricky to see the barriers and traffic cones to avoid ahead of you as there wasn’t a tonne of detail. Playing docked on the television definitely helps with this issue. The game has a catchy soundtrack that didn’t feel grating and repetitive, even when I was challenging the same tracks multiple times.
The controls in Hot Lap Racing are incredibly simple, as you only use the right trigger to accelerate, the left trigger to brake and reverse, and the left thumbstick to steer or lean. Even though it seems very easy, figuring out the exact timing of the three and your position on the track to maximise your speed is pretty challenging. It takes practice to combine all these together to race like a pro against your opponents and the in-game racers. As painful as it may be, completing the full driver training will be beneficial for your future races against the AI or against other human players in multiplayer mode.

When you play multiplayer, you have the option to play locally with four players or online with up to 12. Once all the other racers have joined, you can play: Free Mode, all categories of cars are permitted; GT, maximum-efficiency sports cars; Production, cars that are exactly the same as though released for public sale; Single-seater vehicles with open cockpits that are light and require more precision to drive; Endurance, cars that are built to endure races that last several hours without sacrificing performance; Electric, vehicles with strong acceleration; and finally, random. All these car categories have the option to swap between classic and modern. With this selected, all the racers get to select the livery of their vehicle. Keep in mind that all the vehicles all control differently, so it will take some experimentation to find the one that fits your driving style, maybe it’s the smaller GT with slower acceleration but tighter turning, or a speedy dragster that is fast off the line with loose steering, there is sure to be a car that fits with your driving style.

Hot Lap Racing has been an experience different from the other racing games I have played in the past. I really enjoy how you can race classic and modern cars on real-life tracks, but that tutorial mode was so difficult. I think for a lot of people new to this style of racing game, this may be a turn-off. At least before having this level of challenge, start it off easier and gradually build up the difficulty. Fortunately, the Quick Race mode was a lot more forgiving and if you drove off the track or hit a traffic cone, your race didn’t end. You could get penalised, but I would rather have that happen than it abruptly ending! So if you are up for a challenge, Hot Lap Racing may be a title to check out, especially if you enjoy split-screen multiplayer.