It's just the completely reworked Pacer, in which you race through the future just like in the original game. To be more precise, it's the year 2075, in which motor racing is no longer done on asphalt, but a few decimeters above it - in hovering vehicles that thunder through narrow chicanes at breakneck speeds, and smash missiles, machine gun salvos, mines, and other weapons around each other's ears. The whole thing is accompanied by music from Cold Storage, among others, while parts of the art design were created by The Designers Republic.
The developers hit one of the most important aspects of such antigravity races to the point: the feeling of flight. The gliders zoom smoothly over the runways, stand upright when you force them into a drift through tight turns with the air brakes, and the orientation of the nose plays an important role when approaching inclines. After all, to lose as little speed as possible, you should pull the nose up at appropriate points. Unfortunately, the ships are effectively "glued" to the track, which is why they hardly gain any altitude even after steep elevations and are pulled back onto the track like magnets even after relatively infrequent jumps. All in all, though, the fast hovering feels good.
I'm also taken with the way the cars react to collisions because although touching the board or opponents naturally costs time, you're not slowed down so much that you get out of rhythm. Here Pacer achieves an excellent balance between being challenging and preventing frustrating moments.
A large number of race tracks is also great because R8 has not only revised the eight courses released with Formula Fusion but has also added six new ones. There you don't only fly during the day, but also through chicly illuminated nights, optionally in the opposite direction and additionally on mirrored variants.
Last but not least, whole eight-race variants take place on these courses, ranging from the conventional race to the flowmentum, which was also copied from WipEout: There you have to fly through as many gates as possible to recharge the constantly decreasing shield strength, whereby the ship gets a bit more power with each gate, meaning it tends to constantly get faster. And of course, some modes focus on destroying enemies, achieving the best possible lap time, or surviving as long as possible while the shield is constantly losing power.
Conclusion
Pacer is a decent racer in the spirit of WipEout, which convinces especially with its successful flight physics and considerable scope. This applies to the duration of the campaign, the number of tracks, the numerous options both online and offline, and, to some extent, the relatively free setting of the setup and weapon profiles. That's where the problems start, though, because instead of using focused modifiers with strong special features, you fumble around with a large number of very similar components and barely noticeable effects.
