Fast RMX

The Console Summons the Beast

I have a confession. Console gaming brings out the worst in me. I am a bad sport by nature and gentle friends, let me tell you. This is not something that has mellowed with age.

I’m pretty chill with my PC games. Maybe it’s because I have a much wider variety of stuff to play, including slow-paced and non-competitive games one doesn’t get overly worked up about. I can even handle tricky 2D platformers pretty well with a minimum of bad attitude. What gets me is 3D platformers, fighting games, and driving games.

I got soooo pissed at Super Mario Odyssey. The ending sequence. I’m sitting there cussing up a storm, and realizing I can never play games in front of my child because I don’t want them to see what a hideous monster I am. I kept dying on the Bowser escape sequence, got super pissed, turned off the Switch for a break. Came back and realized I HAD TO START OVER at the boss battle because I didn’t, or couldn’t, save, and I was like

I will not do this to my family

And I gently put the controller down for the day. Gently. With great restraint, because it was $70.

I’ve been playing Fast RMX (review forthcoming) and not gonna lie, I get ~a li’l bit pissy~ It has a multiplayer and, yeah, no. No way. The only way I can safely play the game is on Time Attack, where I just practice tracks by myself. As soon as I get on the circuit it’s like watch out bitches. I’m smashing into cars left and right, grabbing everyone’s pussy, I’m a filthy animal. I want to get Mario Kart 8 but I’m legitimately worried it might end in murder. I’m afraid if I lose I will murder my friend. And I only have like 1 friend so, you know. Not a great strategy. It’s hard to meet people.

P says I’m having flashbacks of frustrations with earlier Nintendo systems and maybe he’s right, I was really bad at games for a long time. I think part of what drives me into a rage on SMO is I know for a fact Nintendo fine-tuned the shit out of that game. It’s super-accessible and you can skip a lot of stuff. You can actually skip most of the boss battles if you want. So I get to the end and I keep dying on the escape sequence of all things, and I have this flashback where I keep getting killed by 1 (one) goomba or something and I snap. Like my grown ass cannot beat this game are you for real? There’s no way I’m going to throw a $70 controller (I was a card-carrying controller thrower back in the day) so I just let loose with this horrific stream of profanity. It would make a decent person’s hair fall out.

Well, I beat the thing. I’m still playing because it’s open-ended. But Nintendo can take the 500-something moons I’m never gonna find and stick them up their collective ass.

Fast RMX

Fast RMX is a futuristic racing game which is apparently an expansion of Fast Racing Neo for Wii U. I’m perfectly content calling this an F-Zero-like. The game looks great and, true to its name, it is very fast.

It has a blue/yellow charge mechanic. The player can toggle the vehicle’s charge color at will. If you pass over a charged strip or jump booster and your charge color matches, your speed increases, otherwise you slow down. It’s a minor inconvenience on the track but if you hit a jump boost while the wrong color you ain’t gonna make it. The game has lots of jumps and lots of opportunity to go airborne.

There’s a bit of a learning curve thanks to the speed, so at first I crashed into walls constantly and felt like the most hopeless player ever, but I kept playing and actually… started getting better. The courses have a lot of variety and most of them have alternate routes and sections where you can get an edge if you time a boost-jump right. The game has 30 courses and 19 cars and doesn’t bother with anything it considers non-essential and I respect the hell out of that. There are 3 levels of difficulty with 10 cups total, placing in a cup unlocks the next one. There’s Time Attack and Hero Mode, whatever that is, and multiplayer, which I ignore for the good of the country.

My strategy is to practice tracks in Time Attack mode, where your goal is to beat the developer’s time, then try to place in the circuit so I can unlock the next cup. In Time Attack especially, I found myself going into a nice bullet hell space as my brain learned to adjust to the speed and just focus on that little harmonious spot in front of my vehicle.

I’m actually not big on driving games which, in retrospect, is a little odd considering how wide my tastes in games are, but I like having a go-to racing game.