Cyber Clutch: Hot Import Nights

I went in wanting this to scratch the Blur-shaped hole in my library, and it almost tricks you in the first two minutes. The neon cityscapes genuinely pop, the high-BPM soundtrack slaps on first contact, and the roster of 20 unlockable cars across light, medium, and heavy classes at least signals some build variety. Then you actually start racing and the whole thing starts to wobble. The handling is the first thing that goes wrong. The drift mechanic works on paper: hold the button, build boost, release for a speed kick, same loop you know from kart racers. In practice the sensitivity is all over the map. One corner you're sliding clean, next corner the car snaps into a barrier like it forgot physics was a thing, and you're pinballing down a narrowing street with zero control. There is no weight to any of it. Crashing into a rival at speed produces basically the same feedback as driving over a road marker. On PC, some reviewers reported solid frame rates, which is at least one thing the port has over the console versions where frame drops are apparently criminal in a genre that lives and dies by consistency. The combat system is where the disappointment compounds. Each vehicle carries a unique weapon, ranging from rockets and EMPs through to shield domes and flame trails, plus you pick up additional offensive and defensive items scattered across the track. Good concept. The execution has a glaring balance problem: one car's laser weapon is so dominant it effectively removes counterplay, hitting with near-perfect accuracy and threatening one-shot kills, while most other weapons chip so lightly you'd barely notice getting hit. Non-lock-on weapons are genuinely hard to aim through the game's frequent jumps and drifts, so the combat half of "combat racer" rarely delivers. When you do connect a good hit, there's no visual damage, no satisfying crunch, nothing that tells you the moment mattered. The ranked online mode exists, but lobbies are sparse enough that getting a full eight-player race is more luck than design. Content-wise you get seven tracks with reverse variants doubling the count to fourteen, five cups in Grand Circuit mode that you must win sequentially to progress, a Quick Race option, and an Expert Grand Circuit that unlocks when you clear the base campaign. The whole single-player side runs out in under five hours. Customization covers wheels, spoilers, fenders, paint layers and neon highlights, which sounds extensive until you realize most categories offer only a couple of options. The game came out of Early Access with a new publisher specifically stepping in to steady the ship, and the community-focused Discord and Reddit presence suggests the devs are at least paying attention. But "potential with patches" is not the same as a finished product worth full attention right now. If your bar is a low-stakes arcade racer you can dip into for a cup or two without any real investment, there are flashes of chaotic fun here, particularly on the wider tracks where speed and weapon chaos actually overlap correctly. But anyone expecting tighter handling, meaningful weapon balance, or a ranked multiplayer scene with actual players in it is going to leave frustrated. The neon looks great. The rest needs more time in the pits. Fred, Scout Team