8. Hresvelgr (Gust, Playstation 2, 2000)

Hresvelgr is a futuristic racing game set in 2040 built around a "Formula Hyper World Racing" league that has shops flying around 3D courses. Hresvelgr is also a mythic Norse creature: a giant eagle that swallows corpses, to be exact, though there's nothing of that nature in this game.

When I say the courses in Hresvelgr are "3D", I mean it. Unlike other futuristic racing games (F-Zero, Wipeout) that were pretty much just car racing games where your vehicle hovers right above a solid track, Hresvelgr gives you 3D control of your ship so that you can fly above or below the track (which is a blue translucent field that you can pass through). The closer you are to the track, the faster your ship moves, so it is in your direct interest to basically be inside of the track.

I played through the Grand Prix mode, which is a series of 5 tracks. Before you race each track, you have beat a qualifying time on a single lap, and even before that the games shows you an overhead camera view of the whole track with a cool tv voiceover-style introduction. At first this seemed like a lot to go through before you get into a race, but the courses that the game throws at you quickly become full of hundred foot drops, tubes, and ridiculous turns, so having the pre-race preparation certainly helped.

The movement feels good, though not great. It does feel like your ship is slightly magnetized to the track, which is probably a good thing given how fats and frantic things get. If you fly too far off of the track, the game gives you a short countdown to return before teleporting you back, which I think is a decent way of handling the touch track to get speed mechanic. Nothing beats drifting into a turn, locking onto an opponent, and firing a missile as you pull out of the turn (the game does have weapons/shields/boosters as items, though they are fairly limited and you get your full stock at the beginning of the race (no item boxes on the track)). Though once more add-ons became available, I opted for the speed booster versus an offensive loadout and it worked out well.  The music is very good at giving you future-contemporary racing vibes, and the presentation is pretty clean and minimal, all of which I love.

No huge gripes with this game, the track layouts were interesting and the actual flying felt pretty good and intuitive. I'm not typically a sticker for framerate but I think it really helps with racing games and this one got pretty bad at times. I believe they eventually released this in Europe with a better framerate, but alas I only have a Japanese copy. The developer, Gust, would go on to become a one-game (type) studio, focusing only on their various RPG series, and blessing us with a game title so confusing, I think about it years later: Ar Tonelico Qoga: Knell of Ar Ciel

4/5, the biggest pleasant surprise of the year so far, I wish Gust would make a modern sequel.