Of the three indie racing games that I’ve played on Xbox One to date, I can’t say that any one of them has been of a quality worthy of recommendation. Super Toy Cars was alright at best, Coffin Dodgers made me question my sanity and now Grand Prix Rock ‘N Racing has come along…and somehow it’s even worse than that.
Mixing Formula 1 style racing with the top-down fashion of games like R.C. Pro-Am or Micro Machines seems like an innocent enough experience. Formula 1, a genre of racing known for high speeds upwards of 200 km/h combined with the childish accessibility of top-down arcade racers sounds like it would be a fun time if the game was constructed somewhat competently but Grand Prix Rock ‘N Racing is definitely not, especially when you first start playing.
After navigating through a bare-bones menu, a recurring attribute of indie racers on Xbox One, you can play either Championship which is the main bulk of the game or a time trial mode, the slightly more fun but still extremely boring mode where you race around desolate empty tracks attempting to beat a set time. Hidden in a menu in the Championship is also a mode entitled “Training”. Although this training mode is one of the worst training modes I’ve seen in a video game. Instead of a helpful mode designed to teach players how to play, training in Rock ‘N Racing is just a short, one-lap race around an empty track without any sort of tooltips, help or even just a show of controls.
The Championship mode takes place in a multitude of seasons, of which I played two before my sanity eventually came into question. When starting this mode you are placed at a significant disadvantage from every other car in the race. This is due to the fact that every other car is either faster, turns better or has more/better turbo than your base vehicle. You’ll remain like this for a while as the game is designed around playing these starting races to get tokens to upgrade your car. The higher you place in the race, the more tokens you get; the maximum amount being four. But this is a formula that fails spectacularly as, by the time you have the right stats to come first place and get four tokens, your car will already be fully upgraded, you won’t need those tokens anymore.
To make matters worse, when you start the first season your car controls horribly. It takes around five seconds for you to accelerate to a moving pace, you turn really slowly and end up crashing into walls—unless you don’t mind coming last—and you will finish under tenth place for the first few races if you even make it that high. Coming first for the majority of first season races is literally an impossible task, even with the AI in as much as a broken state as it is.
Successfully going around turns in Grand Prix Rock ‘N Racing is a miracle. Since the game takes place on such a narrow track with nineteen incredibly stupid AI opponents, crashes are more frequent than NASCAR, F1 and Richard Hammond on Top Gear combined. Groups of AI will forcefully crash into you and other AI like that jerk-of-a friend you all have who likes to ram you off the track in Forza causing pile-ups of around five cars in the centre of the track. Hitting a car, even lightly, will cause you to crash into the sidewall which in turn causes you to spin 360 degrees and stop completely. This happens frequently and combined with the games slow acceleration times, even when fully upgraded, Grand Prix Rock ‘N Racing becomes one of the most infuriating experiences I’ve ever played on Xbox One.
What sets this game apart from other indie racers on Xbox One, however, is performance. Unlike Super Toy Cars and Coffin Dodgers, Grand Prix Rock ‘N Racing performs well, for the most part. Crossing the finish line results in a complete stop for a second but other than that Rock ‘N Racing holds a steady frame rate for the entirety of the game. Where it does fall though is in the crashing department. While the game doesn’t crash as much as its AI do, the game force closed itself numerous times during my playthrough, usually in a row.
Customization, on the other hand, is bare. You have your car. You can’t change its appearance in any way, shape or form and you can’t choose what car you want to race with either. Maybe it shouldn’t bother me as much as it does but when the rest of the game revolves around trying desperately to do well so you can upgrade your car’s acceleration, top speed etc., the game could at least make me feel like this car is mine; like it means something. You hold no sentimental value towards your car, you do not care and you do not want to play this game.
Summary
Grand Prix Rock ‘N Racing is dull. It’s boring. Bad AI mixed with awful physics and a progression system that causes the game to be infuriating from the get-go, Rock ‘N Racing is one of the worst racers I’ve played on the Xbox One. I beg you all to not play this game; don’t even look at it.
Lewis is a games journalist, freelance gaming and consumer-tech journalist. They contributed 344 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: has since served as Editor-in-Chief at StealthOptional and Gaming Editor at MSPoweruser, with bylines at Gfinity Esports and FRVR.