Night Street Racing

There's a lot of racing games out there and plenty of soundtracks to go with it. I've been trying to find a good source for Night Street Racing, but after running into many untrustworthy sites, I came across this version.

This is a nice game when you consider its relatively small file size. It features fairly simple controls that are intuitive as any other racing game and should work well with any steering wheel, shifter and peddle set.

I haven't had too many problems with the game's performance at all. It's fairly compact. Although the graphics aren't exactly next gen, it has the added benefit of working on most machines. Playing on a computer that doesn't have a beefy video card? Here you go.

The shading is pretty smooth. Rather than rendering realistic reflections and shadows in the game, Night Street Racing has fairly simple shading with basic colors and a decent set of lighting and reflection tones. Basically, think of the Grand Theft Auto 3 generation of games.

Car customization is enjoyable. Thankfully, we're beyond the days of just choosing your car and selecting manual or automatic. The customization isn't extremely deep, but you have some body kits and performance parts that can be swapped.

Night Street Racing features quite a few enjoyable areas to drive at night and presents the player with some great atmosphere. I'll say again that the graphics aren't exactly competitive for the Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Playstation 4 and Xbox One generation. Many PC games that you have to pay for have a much prettier gloss about them, but this is a very nice free racer.

The music is great. Some people may not like dance, techno, trance or hip-hop, but the music fits well. Of course, many players will simply turn down the music to play their own tracks, but I never turn down a chance to hear something new. Night Street Racing certainly didn't load my ears down with anything particularly unbearable.

Time trial, free driving mode and street races allow for different ways to play the game. Racing is great, and while it's good to beat records and defeat other drivers, I certainly get the desire to go free riding.

How many times have you done everything else in a game other than the main objective? I know that's what I do in the Grand Theft Auto games. Even with a Skyline, a Subaru and all of my friends' cars outside, it's perfectly relaxing to just ride around in a game.

Night Street Racing gives the player that kind of freedom. Don't feel like racing? Ride around the neighborhoods, do a few tricks, ramp yourself off a few hills and just have fun.

Pros:

• This is a free game! I can't argue with free.
• Nice music. The soundtrack is enjoyable, with a very nice variety of styles.
• Wonderful atmosphere. Even with some simple graphics compared to 2014 standards (which is an unfair comparison, mind you), the lighting, mood and artistic direction behind the game is just relaxing.

Cons:

• GameHitZone downloader doesn't need to push MySearchDial. As a technician, I can't stand bloatware on my installer. DriverSupport, Norton and all of the other stuff will slow down the computer of someone who just wants a game. Even after the downloader, the actual game installer tries to push SearchProtect from Conduit. You can uncheck these, but the installer box is a bit skewed. Thankfully, nothing was installed without permission. At least it asks permission properly.
• The graphics aren't the best. You can only do so much with a racing game, so try to give a prettier appearance to the next one.
• Go multiplayer! Even if the game is simple, having a lobby where players can meet and have online races around the world is some easy ad revenue.

I'm surprised to find this much charm in such a small file size. Just shows you that there are still developers out there, getting their feet wet the way they should. Support them!