A challenging and deep combat racer that frustrates at times, but provides a fun and rewarding experience if you stick with it.
| Developer | SingleTrac |
| Publisher | |
| Franchise | Jet Moto |
| Genre | Racing |
| PSTV | Yes |
| PSN | EU/NA |
World-building & Story
In Jet Moto, you choose a rider and take part in the fictional sport of jet moto, which sees racers competing on all-terrain hoverbikes capable of riding on both land and water. What follows is one of the most bizarre and hectic racing displays I’ve ever seen, where each entrant battles for supremacy while blasting around the tracks.
Of course, as a racing game there’s no real story here, although in a nice touch each character has a mini-biography that tells you something about their history and personality (something SingleTrac used in their other series Twisted Metal). The cast is fairly eclectic and is a nice touch to make things slightly more personal in an otherwise hands-off genre.
Presentation & Sound
Even at the time it released, Jet Moto wasn’t really a pretty game and time hasn’t been the kindest to it, looking somewhat of a pixelated mess compared to the smooth lines of something like WipEout. Still, it makes up for this in other ways and certainly holds up better on Vita’s small screen than elsewhere.
When racing, things tend to be a blur of action that’s very difficult to keep up with – enemy racers tend to move as a pack but regularly fight and knock each other, leading to some clunky looking falling animations. Things like splash effects from your vehicle moving through water look poor and upcoming track hazards like trees are clearly 2D sprites which looks odd in a 3D game, but there are some effects every now and again that look better than the rest (for example, the purple glow of the grapple hook).
The environments you’ll ride through are a similar mix of good and bad elements. The first level you’ll unlock is full of water, beaches and highways you can ride up – it’s not brilliant but looks pretty good, yet when you unlock some snowy levels later they’ll look poor as you’ll literally be able to see the blocks they’ve been built out of (although it’s worth noting that the final track, Nightmare, is a gorgeous ride in the sky of a city). Everything suffers from the common PS1 problem of pop-in too and the framerate here isn’t the most stable, which can make things a bit choppy.
Still, at least the menus are aesthetically pleading and responsive – although the best part of the presentation is the soundtrack which is absolutely kickass, mixing honkytonk piano with surfboard guitar to great effect and even throwing in some epic orchestral tracks for good measure. It makes the racing exciting and the tunes were the kinds of things I was whistling long after I’d finished playing.
Soundtrack highlight – Ice Crusher
Gameplay & Content
Let me get this out of the way to begin with – Jet Moto is an extremely difficult game and I’d imagine the challenge will put a lot of people off. Stick with it though and you’ll find a rewarding and deep racer that’s surprisingly enjoyable – even though it kept kicking my ass, I was still having a tonne of fun.
Getting to grips with the hoverbike is fairly easy – acceleration is done with x, braking with square and boosting can be done four times a lap with triangle. There are a number of higher-level skills that you’re going to need to conquer to succeed though – for example you have a grappling hook which can used with circle on certain corners to take them tightly and keep your speed up, but if you misjudge it you’ll spin into a wall and crash.
A key component of the game is balancing your bike too – you can press the shoulder buttons to take corners tightly, but doing so will cause your racer to lean which won’t correct automatically and risks falling off meaning you’ll constantly have to monitor this. It makes Jet Moto a surprisingly technical racer despite its initial appearance, requiring you to monitor a lot of things while also driving at breakneck speeds, meaning that knowledge of each track is a must to maximise your racing line.
The tracks are all incredibly intricate and require you to adopt different tactics to succeed – for example if you ride in water there will often be waves which slow you down, so it’s better to try to find land, ride around or work out their rhythm to successfully glide through. Later courses become twisting labyrinths full of pits you can fall down and it’s often just a challenge making it through these in one piece – I’d be half tempted to describe the game as a survival racer at times.
This design makes the tracks themselves incredibly memorable – the final one (Nightmare) is unlike anything else I’ve played and a whole lot of fun to finally master, but all the earlier offerings are smart too often tasking you with scaling sharp inclines or avoiding low walls. The best races are undoubtedly the ‘suicide’ tracks – these require you to jostle for a position among a pack and then purposefully loop back on themselves, meaning you’ll have the leading hoverbikes flying head on into the last place stragglers, which is incredibly hectic and fun and can actually mean races don’t quite turn out how you’d expect.
Aside from the difficulty that comes from the intricate tracks, the main challenge comes from the AI which is absolutely relentless and never lets up, exacerbated by the fact there’s 20 other racers all jostling for positions. They’ll start out quickly and if you don’t play at the top of your game they’ll quickly pull away and become uncatchable – meaning you’ll have to pay constant attention to ensure you don’t fall behind. It makes Jet Moto feel somewhat unfair at times, that no matter how much you’re improving you’re still miles off the pace, which definitely won’t be for everyone and can cause a lot of frustration.
If you can tolerate this and stick with it beyond the initial hours, there’s plenty to love about the game. A decent selection of locations ranging from beaches to icy mountain ranges are available and you’re given a number of modes to compete in, the best being a full championship where you’re awarded points based on finishing position – it’s a lot of fun seeing the ranking change between 20 competitors and even though you won’t necessarily be coming first, seeing slow improvement and getting to know your fellow competitors is rewarding.
Jet Moto is the kind of title that will click for some people and not others – it takes time to get used to and can be unfairly challenging at times, but it’s also incredibly rewarding and unlike anything else currently available on the market. If you’re willing to put the time in to figure out how it wants you to play you’ll have a really good time, there’s just a few rough edges along the way that hold it back from greatness.
Conclusion
A tough-as-nails combat racer full of interesting design choices, Jet Moto is a bespoke experience that still delivers something unique and unmatched to this day. The unrelenting AI, obtuse mechanics and grainy graphics may let it down, but underneath there’s a clever and enjoyable racer provides a hefty challenge and is well worth revisiting on Vita.
7.0/10
kresnik258gaming 