Developer: IceTorch Interactive
Publisher: IceTorch Interactive
Platform: PC, Switch
Tested on: Switch
Ultra Off-Road 2019: Alaska – Review
The holiday season is closing in on us and one major release after another is being dropped in the stores. We have topnotch games waiting for us under the Christmas tree and perhaps even earlier when we want to spoil ourselves. While there are many good games to plow through at the moment, be it recent big hitters or simply that specific game you didn’t get around to purchase in 2019, it’s sometimes hard to know which game you want. There are also many poor releases you wouldn’t wish upon your worst enemy, and we just happened to find a perfect candidate for the worst game of the year, Ultra Off-Road 2019: Alaska for the Nintendo Switch. If you get this game under your Christmas tree, you’ve been very naughty.
Story
There is no story to be found in Ultra Off-Road 2019: Alaska. You’ll be dropped in the Alaskan highlands to drive from checkpoint to checkpoint, be it with limitations or not. That’s all there is to the game, and while that sounds interesting on paper and resembles titles such as Spintires: MudRunner, things only get worse from here on out.
Graphics
This game looks like utter shit. We know it’s not professional to cuss or to keep our opinion as simple as this, but it felt like we went back to the days of the first PlayStation. The game hardly handles any textures, shrubberies and grass look like hair implants for the poor, the menu can’t even show you a preview of your car’s color and so on. The environments look like complete crap and your car tends to float from time to time, there is no real impact on the terrain you traverse and trees have an invisible forcefield around them, making them monstrous obstacles. The menu looks like a poor mobile port and everything just screams to put it out of its misery. If this game was created in the Dark Ages it would have been burned for witchcraft.
We saw screenshots from the PC version, which wasn’t half that bad, but this should have never been released in its current state. Even the camera doesn’t handle properly, as it bounces around randomly, sometimes showing you nothing of the screen.
Sound
There is no music present in the game, and you’ll have to make do with a few engine noises. Even when standing still against an obstacle, you’ll be able to enjoy random crash sounds every few seconds as if you’re actually doing something. The sound effects feel as if they come from a free database and even then, they are probably the game’s strongest asset.
Gameplay
This off-road simulation game is like a piñata filled with fecal matter. You think you’re getting candy when you crack open the surface, but all you get is your face covered in shit. The game’s goal is to drive off-road on the Alaskan highlands, but instead, you’ll be stuck all the time, banging against invisible walls, turning down the volume to avoid random crash noises and slowly feel like you’ve failed at living a responsible adult life.
No dear readers, this isn’t that time of the month, this game is simply horrible. On the highlands, you’ll encounter a difference in elevation levels, as is expected for a game such as this, but the physics don’t make sense. More than often you’ll get stuck when trying to drive over a tiny speed bump, while you’re able to drive vertically over a mountain slope. You’ll bang into trees, even though you can clearly see that you’re not hitting anything, at least when the camera doesn’t zoom in to such an extent that your screen turns black completely. It’s as if this game was made on a local game jam for blind people. There is nothing that properly works in this game. You can opt for the normal mode, which dumps you in the wilderness with damage levels, the need to refuel and so on. This is nearly impossible to properly play, so we tried out the free mode to see if it was any better. Sadly, it was not. We found ourselves returning to the main menu more than once, simply because we were stuck or because the camera was in such a position we could never find our way back.
The game does offer a set of options you can adjust to make the simulation part more believable. You can adjust engine, transmission, steering settings and mess around with assists. These options are actually impressive to look at, but if the base game doesn’t work, it doesn’t matter how many options you throw at a player, as they’ll never get to use them anyway. Also, the fact that you need to readjust your settings every level, as the game keeps resetting them, is quite annoying.
Conclusion
Ultra Off-Road 2019: Alaska is the ideal recipe if you haven’t been able to go to the toilet for quite some time. The game is a total disaster as it handles poorly, looks as if we went back in time to the days of the first 3D generation (and even then it looks like shit) and sounds as if the developers raided a free sound database to lay the foundation of their game. The game is unplayable in its current state and is only advised for masochists. If you truly hate yourself, this is the ideal game to play on the big screen and let all of your friends know that you really despise yourself. IceTorch Interactive should torch their office down and erase all proof of this horrendous Switch release.
Ultra Off-Road 2019: Alaska - Review,
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