Music Racer: Ultimate from Sometimes You is a rhythm-based racer on PlayStation 5. Learn more in our Music Racer: Ultimate review!

 

Music Racer: Ultimate from Sometimes You is a rhythm-based racer on PlayStation 5. It’s a neon-infused musical journey in which you can take on the fourteen include racing tracks either with the game’s original soundtrack, use music by streaming it from the Audius streaming platform, or playing your own music by linking to a network folder (such as WebDAV server), an audio file, or playlist with songs in .m3u, .aiff, .mp3, .ogg, .waf, or .flac formats. This is the element that sets it apart from the original version of Music Racer on PlayStation 4, on top of offering a native PS5 version.

You control your car as it automatically races down a hectic race track with white notes appearing on three different lanes in time with the beat. You’ll have to avoid obstacles that can break your combo and keep you from achieving a high enough score. The car can be moved between the lanes by pressing left or right on the left analog stick or the D-Pad or by using the L1 and R1 buttons as needed. Something I suggest you do before you start to play is go into the settings and change the camera distance all the way up to 3, or else you’ll be missing a ton of notes because of how the game’s tracks twist, turn, go up and down, thus blocking your view of notes and obstacles most of the time.

At first, you’ll have a handful of cars unlocked to play as: Contach, Cama, Pantera, and Tuara. You can use the points you collect by playing each song to unlock additional vehicles to customize your experience. Said extra vehicles include the GTR, Lightcycle (an homage to Tron), Lorean (which will certainly remind you of Back to the Future), Raven_zero, Knight Rider (self-explanatory), F1 bolide, Volta, Ferra, Muscle Car, Veron, Motorcycle (Tron again), Lincoln, Trueno, Turbo, Road warrior, Police, Phoenix, Lighting, Cruiser, RSQ, and Santa – which is the most expensive of the lot.

 

Points will also be used to unlock additional racing tracks since, at first, you’ll only have access to the Legacy and new_KYOTO tracks. You’ll have to spend a ton of points to also add the RETRO, VEGA, HORIZON, SEEKER, STATION, RETRO_2, LEGACY_2, DISTANT_LANDS, COLORFUL, CELESTIAL, REBORN, and FIREWORKS track to the selection. There are 48 songs in-game songs available to play, and each one offers the chance to play in Standard, Zen, Cinematic, or Hard settings to tailor your experience.

 

Standard is the regular experience with track layouts of a medium difficulty that you’ll have to memorize in order to maximize your combo and the points you can get per race. Zen removes obstacles from the equation so that your combo can’t be broken, and you can relax a bit as you try to hit as many notes as possible. Cinematic removes the notes and obstacles and allows you to control the camera as your car races down the neon-infused track. Hard will considerably increase the difficulty, really putting your skills to the test.

 

Music Racer: Ultimate features a separate trophy list from that for the original Music Racer. It has the same overall trophy list with 8 Bronze trophies, 27 Silver trophies, and one Gold trophy. To get all of them, you’re going to have to play all of the in-game songs – and any songs you stream – many times since you have to accumulate a ton of points to purchase all cars and unlock all racing tracks. Since the Santa car costs 100,000 points, and you will end up getting around 1,000 points on average every time you play a song based on your performance, you’re going to be playing this one for many hours to get a new Platinum trophy for your collection.

Music Racer: Ultimate improves on the original version of the game by offering you the chance to stream your own music either by way of the Audius streaming platform or by linking to a network folder, such as WebDAV server, thus considerably increasing the replay value. The DualSense controller is also put to great use as it vibrates in tune with the song, which just feels awesome. You won’t have fun playing said songs on most of the racing tracks since some have a layout that makes it pretty much impossible to get all notes unless you carefully memorize every single one of them. Music Racer: Ultimate is out on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 as separate versions with a $6.99 price for each one.

Disclaimer
This Music Racer: Ultimate review is based on a PlayStation 5 copy provided by Sometimes You.