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So, though the racing genre has slowly become better represented on the Switch there are still some obvious gaps in the portfolio. One such area that could use some fleshing out would be the high-speed thrills of Formula 1 racing. In theory Speed 3 is here to deliver you those said thrills, but unfortunately in practice there’s a whole lot keeping it from even getting out of the pits, let alone qualify. The first and most noticeable issue is the game’s look and visual performance. Given the speed these cars move at frame rate would obviously be a concern so perhaps a drop in visual quality would be in order to keep things smooth. Well, if the game was optimized on the visual front I couldn’t tell you what was emphasized because truthfully it’s all pretty dreadful. Periodic performance hiccups are bad enough but then the muddy textures really compound things, especially on tracks where the conditions like rain or the dark already negatively affect visibility. On a few of the tracks I struggled to make out turns, which really is a bit of a bummer. To make matters worse, even though I’m not a racing sim guy and would prefer arcade action the path Speed 3 has taken is bizarre at best. While your car is still predictably fragile you’re rewarded to a degree for wrecking your competition and the penalty for wiping out is relatively minimal Bizarre resulting things like driving the bulk of a race missing a wheel unfortunately come along for the ride and just in general this approach feels like they ran out of time so just left it the way it is, a somewhat baffling mess where aggression can pay off far more than driving effectively if you’re lucky. It’s undoubtedly a unique racer but there’s no denying it has problems from top to bottom without delivering much in the way of fun.
Justin Nation, Score:Bad [5.6]