I recently got ahold of a new Switch Lite, and besides the usual titles I play, which I have purchased previously, I also looked around the eShop for free stuff. And I found F-Zero 99.
I loved Tetris 99 which I thought was an genius take on the classic Tetris formula by turning it into a battle royale, so I was excited to play Tetris 99.
Getting into a match was simple enough.
It then quickly found 99 players.
And put up a vote for the track. I found this to be very interesting as sometimes votes are decided by one or two people, it seems like most tracks have their share of fans and it's all evenly distributed, that was pretty cool.
Once you get into a race, you're presented your rivals, beat these people by getting a higher place finish than them and you gain points to your rank, it's a cool system and I found that it's not too hard to win at least some points every race.
The start of the match is set outside the track, all racers try to go as fast as possible into the track and it's all really chaotic and fun.
The usual game mechanics from F-Zero are here. Boosts, pads that refill your life meter, drifting, etc.
But now boosts are performed by taking a chunk out of your life meter, and you can spin your car by pressing ZR/ZL to try and defend against other opponents or take them down, this has a cool down period of course so you can't just spam it.
Getting kills is really satisfying, and as someone who's gotten killed too, it also makes you really mad hahaha.
You can of course also get eliminated if you drive poorly and hit the walls and other cars a lot, or get thrown off track.
But I'd say the main focus of the game is still racing. Coming first will net you lots of exp and points for your rank as you'll have beaten all your rivals.
There's also another new mechanic, the super boost.
By collecting these yellow dots that show up around the track and by hitting a big yellow car that shows up from time to time, you get super boost points to fill the super boost gauge.
Once you have enough, you can activate it.
By doing so, your car gets to travel above the map, takes no damage, gets repaired over repair/refuel pads and there are boost pads all over so you can get ahead of the pack, just make sure to drive properly and you'll get a very nice lead.
Overall, this is a really fun game. Nintendo or whoever developed this did a great job and I can see Miyamoto's vision of "if there's nothing new to add, then don't even bother with a new game" shining through.
Sure, it's a shame that we haven't gotten a new mainline F-Zero in a long long while, but this had just enough innovation to be worth, well, existing.
Whilst I love Tetris 99, I have to say I'll probably be playing this way more. The action packed gameplay is just more fun for me. I'll keep Tetris as a solely offline affair to kill time.
I highly recommend this for anyone's who's got a Switch and a NSO subscription. It's not too involved or in depth of a game, but it is fun, and that's what matters.
Thanks for reading!
