Wheel World Review – Worth The Ride

One of the things I have loved about the indie space is just how game developers can take an idea, one familiar to you, and twist it on its head. Take, for instance, the magical, fantastical world of Wheel World, from developer Messhof Games, which manages to toe the line between that familiar ground and something wholly unique that you just want to get sucked into.

At the core of it, Wheel World is a racing game with high-end bikes as the means to an end of getting rep, the in-game currency you need to get taken seriously on these tranquil country streets, but that’s not all that is going on. Your character, Kat, awakens in the middle of nowhere, only to find a magic floating skull that needs her help in bringing about the great shifting of the gears, some sort of cosmic event that can only be brought about by assembling the legendary bike. You soon find out, though, that these bike parts were stolen by a group of legendary racers that you need to hunt down and beat, though, you guessed it a bike race to get those parts.

Here lies the reason you need to earn rep in Wheel World, since each of these people is blocked behind a rep wall that you can only clear by participating in races around the open-world land and completing a series of challenges within to get that rep. These challenges lack variety, with each race requiring players to work towards the same four challenges, which include placement, a time trial, and collectable letters, but it really helps that the races are just fun as hell to do. The bike mechanics are great, and if you are playing on PlayStation 5 like I was, the haptic feedback and dynamic rumble are some of the best out there, fully immersing you as you swerve down hills or take a ramp to cut part of the course.

Races can play out in a few ways, but most will follow the same formula, with a longer course with two laps around tends to be the most common, at least starting out. Surprisingly enough, many of these races can start out near each other, and many I could visually see where they intersected another course, or led me away from familiar ground, and still each felt engaging rather than feeling overly familiar. This happens even more so when you begin to realize how much leeway a race gives you. The goal during the race is to make your way through rings that mark the course on the map, but since most rings are far between and most courses have a lot of open pace, both on the road and in the surrounding landscape, you will often be able to create your own path to the finish. Yes, there will be times a glaring cut across an area will be prevented by ring placement, which is fair, but other times, spotting a hill you can use to leap over walls, or down hills, is not only the right choice, but the fun one too.

Wheel World races will play out over many different terrains, too, and there is some importance to the many bike parts you will earn throughout. Racing in the city, you might go for speed over anything else since the entire track is a concrete street, but in the countryside, this might not be the best way. Focusing on grip so you can cut off the main road to shorten the distance can have you coming out ahead over just being fast. This will keep you switching up your bike well into the later hours of the game, sometimes even race to race, once you get familiar with what one race might entail over another. Playing towards speed might make taking corners a nightmare, and there are plenty of races that are nothing but.

The biggest issue with the racing mechanic as a whole is the AI, which sometimes lacks depth you might want in a game where you’re constantly competing against it. Racers will take the roads almost exclusively, which means not all, but some races, have shortcuts that will not even give you a great leaderboard time, but set you well ahead of the pack. In one particular race, a jump takes you down a winding road that reaches along a hill. You clear the entire thing while all the AI is fighting it. Some games give you that one racer that just knows all the tricks, but here, not so much.

There are also issues with Wheel World‘s AI’s aggression, especially since the game does something that usually bothers me, which is making them immune to all negative effects in races. Races can start with you getting bounced around while jockeying with the pack, your opponents getting zero impact from you colliding with them, so much so that you can even get stuck together. This becomes worse when they drag you into the back of a car, only for you to fall off and need to respawn, and they bounce off the car and keep riding without losing momentum. Later stages, this becomes far more noticeable as you weave through tight corners, only for some guy to appear out of the left side of your screen coming right at you like a bullet.

Reloading often can lead to negative effects as well, which the AI can exacerbate. It’s pretty easy to ‘win’ a race, but completing the time trial or letter grab that requires you to take first after finding them, you start to feel the pressure and constantly reload after one or two costly mistakes. There are points that you reload in and immediately fall off your bike cause it didn’t spawn your bike right. This often leads to framerate issues. I needed to restart the game to fix them, but they ONLY occurred when I was reloading every few moments because I couldn’t get the start right on a few particular drives. Another thing is that the soundtrack would cut off sometimes from this as well, which is a shame because the zen indie beats were a highlight of the experience, even among so much done right.

If you were afraid all you would be doing is racing, think again. Wheel World has, as the name suggests, a gorgeous world to explore with plenty of things to discover along the way. There were plenty of points I went riding towards a new destination, only to realize I had passed it a mile back and was just enjoying my ride. Lone Wolf riders also dart through the countryside, where you can challenge them to short rides. The game has a map, but it doesn’t really outline much of what you can discover, making it exciting when you see a cool path you want to ride, only to be rewarded. I was expecting the world to feel somewhat lonely, especially after the first area where your character awakens, but no, there is such a vibrancy to everything around you that invokes a reaction and sucks you in.

Verdict

Issues with the AI aside, I had a blast playing this game, and there was never a moment I felt the problems that could mire the experience weren’t outweighed by the whole unique experience I had engrossed myself in. Earning bizarre bike parts to mix and match my frame for the best performance, then winning that race I was struggling on. These things were absolutely worth it to me. Even reloading my game to cut back on the framerate issues only annoyed me so far, as I had to stop racing for even a moment. Wheel World invoked a passion in me that most games honestly fail to. What a blast to get lost in, I can’t wait to do so again.

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