Throughout the first few moments, Downtown Membership has me feeling like Max Verstappen. Lined up on the grid, I flex my gloved fingers and grip the steering wheel. The countdown begins and my proper hand finds the shift knob. Three. Two. One. And I am able to race.
After the primary lap, a distinct Max springs to thoughts: my childhood buddy’s Labrador retriever who was hit by a automotive. Because it seems, driving in Downtown Membership is tough. At the very least, it is laborious at first.
An hour after my first horrendous lap, it is all coming collectively. The engine sings as I apex a nook, passing a slower automotive on the within. I sweep to an extended straight that dips beneath an elevated metropolis stroll. The solar shines off the home windows of the workplace towers to the left and proper. The sky is blue. The clouds are fluffy. Abruptly, I am in heaven— albeit a really restricted, Early Entry heaven.
What’s it?: An Early Entry racing recreation with each thumbstick controls and full digital controls.
Platforms: Meta Quest (Assessment performed on Quest 2)
Launch Date: Out now (Early Entry)
Developer: Commuter Video games
Worth: $15.99
Downtown Membership is a “simcade” racing recreation that gives each conventional thumbstick controls and full digital controls. The latter management scheme means that you can work together instantly with the foremost components of the automotive. Our palms are on the wheel, the guide shifter, and the parking brake, and actuating any of those controls creates the kind of driving response we might count on.
That is the sport’s massive hook. Use your real-life hand to yank the digital handbrake at 80 miles per hour and see what occurs. On this approach, Downtown Membership succeeds in offering the easy, pure enjoyable of direct, responsive person controls. Whereas the expertise does take some getting used to – gripping with the grip triggers and accelerating/braking with the index finger triggers require some cerebral flexibility. The tip result’s a smile and a thrill.
For moments when issues change into too hectic, releasing the steering wheel and utilizing the analog stick mechanically swaps to the extra conventional thumbstick management scheme in real-time. Whereas this saps a little bit of the novelty, typically the extra conventional management methodology is extra dependable and efficient.
What’s spectacular is how the sport adapts to our wishes and not using a stutter. Shifting from full digital management to conventional management is actually seamless. It is a fluid and dynamic system that does nicely to provide the participant no matter we wish, at any time when we wish it.
![Downtown Club at night, a driver sits in the driver's seat with hands on the steering wheel and shifter.](https://www.uploadvr.com/content/images/2024/06/Downtown-Club-Night-Mode.jpg)
You’ll be able to at the moment decide 4 recreation modes. Occasions are thematically organized competitions with quite a few pre-arranged tracks; finishing these earns expertise factors and forex to purchase unlockables. Customized Races are customizable races with many parameters that the participant controls. Time Assault lets us race for one of the best lap occasions, that are posted to on-line leaderboards. Lastly, Free Drive lets us freely discover the sport’s bigger map, from which the smaller racetracks of different modes are pulled, at any time of day or night time.
The graphics are beautiful and the aesthetic is gorgeous. After lastly attaining a podium end in one of many recreation’s early Occasions, I launched into Free Drive mode to easily benefit from the metropolis that Commuter Video games has constructed.
Within the daytime, town seems to be like Mirror’s Edge, and at night time it seems to be like Tokyo Xtreme Racer 2. Diving beneath the floor into the relative obscurity of town’s subterranean tunnels, issues change into claustrophobic in one of the best of the way. I push my automotive by the sodium gentle, the undulating roadways snaking up and down and round blind bends till I am on the bleeding fringe of my potential.
I burst into the daylight and drift up an on-ramp to the elevated freeway. I soar by the glittering canyons created by high-rise towers. The sense of freedom is palpable. I hit the gasoline and really feel the fun of velocity.
![A downtown Club race at sunset. Cars line up at the starting grid.](https://www.uploadvr.com/content/images/2024/06/com.commutergames.downtownclub-20240618-192711.jpg)
Downtown Membership provides a collection of consolation controls together with:
Participant alignment: that is an anti-roll setting that may align the participant’s perspective to the physique of the automotive, to the highway, or to a relentless stage decided by the VR boundary.
Collision attenuation: this setting causes the display screen to show black for a user-selectable length after a crash in opposition to partitions or different vehicles.
Vignette impact: additionally known as “tunneling,” this setting blackens the perimeters of the participant’s imaginative and prescient at excessive velocity or when making excessive turns.
All of those consolation settings will be adjusted or turned off by the participant.
Sadly, the sport’s standing as an Early Entry launch retains hitting the brakes. The Free Drive mode feels sparse and depopulated, and the Occasion mode is proscribed. There’s just one main location, and the race tracks that spring from it are reasonably related. You will not at the moment discover on-line play, and there are simply three vehicles within the recreation, that are virtually indistinguishable from each other.
The race music is terrible. I’ve spent ten minutes attempting to think about a technique to clarify it successfully, and I am undecided that I can. It is the kind of music that may exist if Shadow the Hedgehog began a punk rock band. It is brutally repetitive, electrical guitar trash.
In equity, I’ve an extended historical past of obsessing over racing video games with all-timer soundtracks: the samba of Hiro Kawaguchi’s OutRun compositions, Richard Jacques’ euro beats from Metropolis Avenue Racer, and the ethereal metropolis pop of Kazumi Totaka’s Wave Race 64. Granted, I am unable to count on each recreation to sound nearly as good as these, however Downtown Membership wants higher tunes.
![A view from the apartment in Downtown Club, showing a beautiful park and cityscape.](https://www.uploadvr.com/content/images/2024/06/Downtown-Club-Home-Hub.jpg)
It additionally wants higher AI. The opponents in Downtown Membership are paradoxically chaotic and predictable on the identical time. They adhere virtually universally to a single racing line, working each race as in the event that they have been particular person segments comprising some kind of hatchback monorail. Passing them is straightforward and takes no planning or approach. On the identical time, being amongst them is fraught and irritating since they haven’t any regard for his or her lives or the lives of others. When you’re of their line, blocking them from being part of their monorailic unit, they’ll merely smash by you.
Aggressive AI in racing video games is ok, particularly when your car is equally planted and sturdy. However in Downtown Membership, it is not. Your automotive is a marshmallow and so are its tires, and when outbalanced aggression is the one technique that the pc AI can make use of, it will get outdated in a short time.
I additionally want that the participant vehicles have been extra interactive. I might like radio controls, for instance. It will be good to regulate the music quantity mid-race or change between radio stations, assuming the builders produce a extra various soundtrack, or to modify the radio off solely if they do not. I think about touching the infotainment system and utilizing it as one does in an actual automotive, adjusting the on-screen map, and planning a navigation path to information me to the place I need to go in Free Experience mode.
![The virtual storefront in Downtown Club, which shows cars, outfits, and helmets for sale.](https://www.uploadvr.com/content/images/2024/06/Downtown-Club-Car-Shop.jpg)
Downtown Membership additionally wants extra vehicles. Who has ever heard of a racing recreation with solely three vehicles? The place are all of the vehicles?! It wants extra liveries, collectibles, maps, and on-line multiplayer.
However I should not complain an excessive amount of. It is an Early Entry recreation, and if Commuter Games’ roadmap is to be believed, an upcoming free replace will resolve all of my complaints.
Downtown Membership Assessment-In-Progress – Present Ultimate Verdict
Downtown Membership’s present model is extraordinarily enjoyable and fascinating however whereas it has a beautiful aesthetic and critical potential, presently, it is only a bit sparse. The complete launch guarantees on-line multiplayer, multiplayer Free Experience, public lobbies, extra race modes, three waves of vehicles, and two waves of maps that sound various and fascinating. I’ve no motive to consider that these updates will not occur, and once they do, Downtown Membership can be a must-play expertise.
UploadVR makes use of a 5-Star ranking system for our recreation opinions – you’ll be able to learn a breakdown of every star ranking in our review guidelines. As a review-in-progress, that is at the moment unscored to replicate our approach on overlaying post-launch updates. We’ll revisit this assessment as soon as Downtown Membership enters full launch.