Super Woden GP II Review 9/10 "No Wooden Spoon for Woden 2" 🏎️ @maxharvey79 @ViJuDaGD #IndieGame #IndieGameDev #GameDev

As a man of a certain age, and one who cut his teeth on Commodores rather than Nintendo's, my nostalgic heart belongs to isometric racing games. Super Cars, Super Off Road and Skidmarks (*titter*) all get my pistons pumping and having tried a couple again recently (prompted by this review), they stand up fairly well as the gameplay is solid and simple.

Super Woden GP II has a silly name, but we’ll not dwell on that. We will dwell instead on what this game brings to the modern racing table. It brings us something delightfully retro, is what it does. What I will say before anything else is that if you enjoyed the games mentioned above, there’s a very good chance you’ll love this. 

Essentially, this is a game from the 90s, but brought up to date. I mean, not totally up to date, more a tidy up, graphic spruce and a little injection of framerate Botox. What IS the same from the 90s, is the music. Fairly annoying synth tunes of the sort you’d expect playing Outrun or similar. I had to turn it off after a while, but you may enjoy it.

The game’s UI is a little confusing and it took me a while to work out what I needed to do in what order. I also foolishly bought some new cars when I had some money, then was stuck as some races require a specific car type to enter. Worse, some races require a specific car MODEL to enter. Which brings me on to my only moan about this game. It can be a bit of a grind if you aren’t sensible with car buying. Unlike a free-flowing game like the Forza series, where there are always multiple races open to you, I spent a while with only a single option (though this was due to my reckless purchases early on).

That forehead wrinkling irritation aside, this is a very solid and enjoyable racing game. It starts slowly, as you can at first only afford a Ford Cortina with three wheels missing, but once you have a competitive car in your garage, you can tweak it and get it out and winning races. And winning races is satisfying as the physics are satisfying. It’s pretty unforgiving, as a single small crash can put an end to your chances of winning, but each race is short (endurance races aside), so you’re soon back in the saddle and trying again.

There are single car rallies (time trials), standard races and local multiplayer to try so there’s plenty of variety.  I have found myself sucked into this game and the sheer volume of car models and configurations, combined with really solid racing action, will keep me playing for a while yet. 

Another small, but lovely addition, is the variety of graphics modes you can switch between, allowing you to play it as a much older looking, more pixelated game, through pencil drawn to something more smooth and arcade-like.

SUMMARY

I can highly recommend this game to all racing game fans, particularly those in the 40+ bracket, as it’ll bring back fond memories of rally games of yore, just without the bikini girls holding up lap signs. But that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.