Rise: Race the Future

You wouldn't need a full elevator ride to convince me that Rise: Race the Future has a great premise. It's a slightly futuristic take on Sega Rally with great graphics and a robust single-player campaign. Couple that with the fact that the Switch is in desperate need of great arcade-style racing games and you have what sounds like a winning formula. There's just one problem: I can't stand playing this game. We'll see how that impacts this review.

With a subtitle like Race the Future, I wasn't sure what I was getting myself into. As it turns out, Rise is a racing game set in a near future world where car tires are able to effortlessly switch from driving on the road to hovering over the water. This sets up a fun twist on the rally racer that doesn't just include mud and snow-covered roads, but also entire lakes and rivers you have to drive through. This is an ingenious new wrinkle that allows for much more diverse stages, all with a vaguely science fiction tilt to it.

This is a cool concept, and I was even more impressed when I saw the lengthy campaign mode. The developers don't just give you a bunch of levels to play through, but rather load them up with all kinds of missions to complete to earn trophies and new fans. You'll need to perform a lengthy drift, overtake a bunch of cars, stay above a minimum speed, never fall to last and so much more. There are stages where you're not even concerned with the rest of the race, because all you're worried about is hitting the hand brake a few times and avoiding a major crash.

And all this comes together thanks to the great course designs and locations. This is a rally race, so we spend most of our time up in the mountains and through the forests. We'll occasionally see the fleeting signs of civilization, but so much of this game is about driving through the wilderness and seeing how it has been impacted by future advancements in technology. These are absolutely gorgeous locations that are colorful and filled with detail, all while giving us a glimpse at where we might be headed.

In fact, these locations are so good that I didn't even mind going back to them. Instead of just giving us a mirror mode, each of the four settings have multiple tracks and paths. The game also does a lot with the weather conditions, layering rain, snow and heavy fog over the level. This is hardly the first racing game to throw rain and night driving at you, but I was impressed by how much these conditions helped make the tracks feel different.

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And that's the thing I keep coming back to -- I'm legitimately impressed by Rise: Race the Future. I love the locations, the insane amount of content and futuristic elements, but find the actual gameplay to be a nightmare. This is clearly made by talented people who know what racing fans want from this type of game, and yet they end up getting the most important thing wrong.

I expect a certain amount of looseness from a rally racer, but Rise gets the balance all wrong. From the very first race you'll know that you have to be gentle with the steering, or else you'll spin around and straight into a giant rock. This isn't as bad when you're on dry land, but ends up being a real problem when hovering over the river. This is where the gameplay just feels ... wrong. It's almost like you're supposed to be able to air brake left and right like a WipEout game, but instead it feels exactly like you're driving on a road with no traction under the tire. Even with the grippiest cars you can unlock, the controls are a mess. It's not that I never got used to the handling, but rather that I never felt in control.

It's also worth mentioning that Rise: Race the Future is for single players only. There's no online multiplayer mode or split-screen, because you're only going up against computer opponents in this game. The bright spot is that there's quite a bit to do as a solo player. We're already talked about the 64 challenge races with multiple goals, but there are also eight different championships to complete and a simplistic time attack mode. But even with all that content, this package would be a lot better with some form of multiplayer functionality.

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The frustrating part is that I am a big fan of everything else in this game. The locations are stunning, the futuristic tweaks are cool, the various modes hold a ton of content, and I can't get enough of going from road to mud to the water in a single race. This would easily be one of the best racing games on the Switch, if not for the awful gameplay. Of all the things the developer could have messed up, that is the worst one.

If Rise is any indication of what we can expect, the future is going to be filled with near-uncontrollable cars that are terrible at driving over water. Despite an incredible premise that should have been awesome, Rise: Race the Future is marred by floaty gameplay and a complete lack of multiplayer modes. That's a shame, because it's clear that a lot of work has gone into creating these gorgeous levels and the robust campaign mode. But with a garage full of cars with squirrely controls, this newest racing falls short of crossing the finish line.