September was a good month for releases on Apple Arcade and this was my top pick to take for a spin. I’ve got a thing for arcade racers and Horizon Chase 2 did a god job of scratching that itch.
Race against 19 opponents, collecting tokens along the way and winning prize money, in order to upgrade your cars and buy new skins. Unlock more cars and the tournament races.
The world tour is over five major locations, United States, Brazil, Morocco, Italy and Thailand. Each has about ten races and the tournament mode has you race four tracks back to back in mini leagues.
My favourite part of HC2 is the feeling of weaving through traffic at high speed and slamming it into nitro round a sweeping bend surrounded by tables and statues at the side of the road that could collide at any moment.
Presentation is more than up to scratch for this style of game. Warm colourful graphics and an energetic and melodic original soundtrack.
With the exception of later crate smashing challenges, which require precision, I’ve found the difficulty overall too easy. Breezing through the first half of the game. It comes alive later when the racing gets faster, the corners sharper, and it becomes trickier to maintain first place finishes while collecting all the tokens. To increase the difficulty try taking a level one car into Morocco or even Italy and see how you get on. Doing that led to some enjoyably nail biting second place race results.
This makes HC2 ideal for online multiplayer but at the moment that is looking under developed. Hopefully there are some updates on the way.
Regardless, the solo racing is exhilarating enough that I’ve put a lot of hours into unlocking near everything and become a fan of numerous specific race tracks.
Available from Apple Arcade
mishmash 