Antigraviator: Viper Trails (DLC)

My honest first reaction firing up Antigraviator was excitement: a no-speed-limit anti-gravity racer in the vein of Wipeout and F-Zero, built by a tiny Belgian studio, launching on PC without a Sony exclusivity tag attached. That hook is real, and for about the first hour the game completely delivers on it. The Gravs - your floating, upgradeable ships - streak through six worlds covering urban corridors, arctic passes, jungle circuits and space environments, all of them genuinely gorgeous. Track-side stats like your boost meter and lap position are displayed directly on your Grav's hull rather than at the screen edges, which is a smart, eyes-forward design call that bigger studios should steal. Controls are tight: the left-trigger air brake lets you shave corners cleanly, and a quick flick of the right stick barrel-rolls your ship sideways to dodge hazards or physically batter a rival into the barrier. That barrel roll is the best thing in the game. Enjoy it, because the cracks appear quickly. The trap system is where things unravel. Rather than conventional weapons, Antigraviator places fixed environmental trap points around each track - rockslides, missile barrages, energy walls, hover mines, blinding gas - that any racer can trigger by spending the same orange energy cells used for turbo boosts. Spend cells to trap, or spend them to boost: that sounds like an interesting resource decision. In practice, only one racer can trigger each trap per lap, which means you are hammering the activation button the moment the icon flashes and hoping your reflexes beat the AI. There is no real strategy, and when a trap spawns box obstacles just over a blind crest at this speed, avoiding them stops being a skill test and starts being a coin flip. The Pure race mode, which strips traps entirely, is available for exactly this reason - and honestly reveals a tighter, cleaner game underneath all the chaos. The campaign runs you through ten tiered leagues, each containing four races, and you earn credits to unlock access to higher leagues and upgrade your Grav's wings, transmission, plating, and shield systems. Three Grav classes are available to purchase. Progress feels deliberate at first, but the credit grind to enter later leagues means replaying earlier events repeatedly, and the track roster - fifteen circuits plus reversed versions - starts to feel thin well before you are done. Three race modes mix things up: Single, which is standard racing with traps; Pure, trap-free; and Death Race, an elimination format where the last-place Grav gets cut each lap. Death Race is chaotic and the most fun mode to show friends. Speaking of friends - the local split-screen runs up to four players, which is the best reason to own this game. Getting four people on the couch with Antigraviator running is a legitimately good time, precisely because the trap chaos and pure speed create the kind of involuntary screaming that makes couch racing nights worth running. Frame rate drops in split-screen are reported by several reviewers, and the screen real estate per player makes spotting incoming traps even harder - but drunk Saturday gaming rarely cares about frame-perfect precision. Online multiplayer is a different story: the player pool has always been thin, matchmaking has been historically unreliable, and at this point in the game's life you are unlikely to find a full lobby. Solo, the AI delivers a challenge, but the campaign's lack of rubber-banding means if opponents gap you, catching back up is genuinely difficult without track memorisation. Antigraviator sits in an awkward spot. Redout offers more technical depth and a richer campaign. Wipeout Omega Collection on PC via emulation is flat-out a better package with more personality. What Antigraviator has going for it is accessibility - the controls are simple enough that non-racing-game players can be competitive within minutes - and a sense of raw speed that very few indie titles match. If the couch multiplayer setup appeals and your expectations are calibrated toward "fun budget racer" rather than "Wipeout heir apparent", there is a good night in here. Just do not expect it to hold your attention solo past the ten-hour mark.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

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