Review: SpeedX 3D (3DS eShop)

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4 mins read

Imagine this: You’re a turtle, moving through an empty, white world filled with coloured blocks. If you can wrap your head around that, you’ve arrived at the dullest eShop game to date: SpeedX 3D.

Whatever regulatory body that looks over advertising in the games industry should rap developer, Gamelion, over the knuckles for false advertising: SpeedX 3D is anything but speedy (though at least the “3D” bit is correct). This is a racing game with no sensation of speed whatsoever. Courses are randomly generated environments of white squares and coloured blocks, and you move through them – even on the fastest gameplay setting – at a snail’s pace. I crashed once because I had genuinely fallen asleep playing it.

On the other hand, it’s probably for the best that the game is paced slowly because, thanks to the insane decision to have the game play from a first-person perspective, even on a slow pace a bit of motion sickness is likely. The environment is blurry and visually uninteresting. The courses are littered with coloured blocks. Some move, some are stationary, but they’re all blocks, and you’ve seen everything this game has to offer within, quite literally, a minute. Crash into a block and the game simply cuts to the “Game Over” screen. No spectacular explosions for this turtle, he just fades into a sweet oblivion when running into the deadly orange cube. Amazingly, while there’s no energy to the visual style the generic (to put it nicely) false-techno soundtrack actually outdoes the graphics in being completely uninspiring.

Strangely though, despite the slow pace SpeedX 3D can be quite difficult. If the motion nausea doesn’t get the better of you, and you manage to stay awake, the horrific controls will hit you hard. Turning around in this game is like pushing through that water. And you’re driving through this water mostly blind, to boot. See an object in SpeedX 3D? Well, thanks to the horrible pop-in, you’re probably not going to be able to react in time to avoid it. Gamelion tries to help players out by projecting where the objects are going to pop-in to the race track by highlighting on the floor with the same colour of the incoming object, but here’s a wild idea – if the game controlled well players would be able to help themselves.

There’s four different gameplay modes, but it’s a real stretch to find any substantial difference between them. The “levels” mode has a finish line, the “endless” mode finishes when you hit an object. It’s not like one is more enjoyable than the other.

I’m not going to give this game the respect of any further words, since Gamelion clearly went into developing this one with no respect for gamers. We’ve seen some generic trash on the eShop before, from cynical developers/ publishers that have figured out the eShop is so unsupported that any release is going to get airtime. Gameloft’s and Circle, with both Let’s Golf and that Blackjack game are two examples of horrible, derivative publishers. Gamelion has successfully hit the bottom of that barrel with SpeedX 3D, which is, I guess, a feat in itself.

But at least that Blackjack game had pretty anime girls, and the golf game worked. This one has absolutely nothing.

– Matt S

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  • For the first sentence this actually sounded pretty cool. Until I read the second sentence. D:

    Thanks for helping me with my decision on this one.

  • Ooo? I bought this game and it's great! Firstly, you have screens from Android version what is no respect for gamers too as you're showing different game… Secondly, try to finish all levels and say again that it's easy and slow game. Useless review… Author probably played 20 seconds in each mode only and here is a result….

  • Hi Gorge,

    Thanks for dropping by and commenting.

    I can assure you, I always play the games I review thoroughly. As I mentioned in my review, this game is not easy, but that's because it suffers from poor controls and terrible pop-in.

    It *is* slow. There is no sensation of speed whatsoever. And as for the screenshots, I'm doing the 3DS version a great favour by posting Android screens – the 3DS version looks far worse.

    I'm glad you enjoyed the game, though – thanks to your comment other readers now have a different perspective. 🙂

  • "The environment is blurry and visually uninteresting" – did you try to turn the 3D display off? Maybe this would help…

  • Good point – I should have explained that better – turning the 3D effect off helps reduce the blurring issue, but without the depth effect it's even less visually interesting.

    Depends on the trade-off you're willing to make, really. 😉

    Thanks for the input and reminding me to clarify that!

  • "but without the depth effect it's even less visually interesting." Ohh pls, you're a real hater. I like the art style of the game. Also, I don't have any issues with controls… Sad, you have right to have your own opinion but as a reviewer you should be more objective. This game is really good and interesting and I'm recommending it to everyone…

  • Dude, 3DS version really looks far worse because there is no AA in 3DS version. Also it is very bad that gamelion have sibmitted bullshots to Nintendo 🙁

    Great review!

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