Make Way

I normally cover games where netcode and time-to-kill are the whole conversation, so a top-down arcade racer built around collaborative track sabotage is not my usual beat. But about twenty minutes into my first four-player session with Make Way, one of my friends dropped a loop segment directly after a 90-degree chicane, someone else slapped a fan hazard on the exit, and the entire field went airborne simultaneously. That is the core pitch right there, and it lands every time. The structure is simple but cleverly self-propelling. Before each race segment, every player picks one track piece from a randomly drawn selection and snaps it onto the growing course. Loops, corkscrews, seesaws, train crossings, drawbridges, the list expands as you level up through an XP system. Once pieces are placed, you race that section, score points at checkpoints and the finish line, then repeat with new pieces bolted on. The track grows every round, meaning a session that starts as a tidy two-corner layout turns into a sprawling obstacle nightmare by the end. Whoever hits the target score first (3,000 points in a four-player game) wins, and if two players tie, it goes to a sudden-death no-walls finale that is genuinely stressful in the best way. The four modes scale the chaos usefully. Race strips out weapons and hazards so newcomers can feel the handling without getting goo-cannoned off a loop. Classic introduces weapon pickups including rockets, Tesla coils, goo blasters, and a rooftop shotgun, plus placeable hazards during the build phase. Chaos removes the guard rails entirely, so the slightest tap from a rival sends you into the void. Custom lets the host tune everything independently. Handling is deliberately floaty, somewhere between arcade and outright slippery, and that divisiveness is real: some players will find it expressive once they learn braking distances on corners; others will call it broken. The camera is legitimately the weakest part of the package. It locks to the leading car, which is the classic Micro Machines elimination mechanic, but when the track folds back on itself across multiple levels, the zoom behavior gets confused and you can easily fly into an obstacle you had no visual warning about. That issue did not go away with the World Tour update. Speaking of updates: the post-launch World Tour patch added Team Mode, three new environments (Tropical Island, Lunar Surface, Toy Room), and eight extra vehicles, all free. A paid Legends Pack brings ten more cosmetic vehicles. The unlock grind behind new track pieces and cars is one genuine friction point. Progress is XP-gated, the post-race stat screens cannot be skipped quickly, and finishing outside first place in the early game earns almost no XP, which creates a catch-up problem for less experienced players. On the technical side, the game runs peer-to-peer rather than dedicated servers, and some players have reported lobby connection hiccups and desync issues online. For a game whose online multiplayer is half its value proposition, that matters. Solo against bots is playable but not the reason to buy this. The AI fills the lobby, gives you something to practice against, and works well for getting a read on the handling. But without three humans trying to actively ruin your line through a corkscrew, the build phase loses its tension and the whole thing goes quiet. If your gaming circle plays together regularly, in the same room or with reliable enough connections online, Make Way earns its place in the rotation fast. If you are a solo buyer who occasionally finds one friend online, the experience is thinner than the Metacritic score suggests.

Fred · Scout Team

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