4PGP Switch 2 review: Insulting

Games like 4PGP (Four Player Grand Prix) are why ‘arcade’ became such a dirty word in the early 2000s.

Sure, 3Goo’s new racer ticks most of the boxes for classic arcade-style racing fun, with bright, bold colours, breathlessly fast driving and some of the best-looking racing cars ever seen, yet somehow misses all of the key fundamentals that made real ’90s arcade racing so great.

If Daytona USA was LEGO Technic, this is Duplo. 

It starts well enough with recognisable, lookalike F1 cars from 1992 howling around at a beautifully smooth frame rate. Senna’s McLaren, Mansell’s ‘Red 5’ Williams, Alesi’s number 27 Ferrari… all unlicensed lookalikes, but so obviously F1 cars. The tracks are ‘inspired by’ real circuits, too – there’s nothing licensed here.

The core driving is disappointingly basic. The cars are all mega-grippy, allowing you to fly around most corners flat-out if you know your racing lines. Hairpins do require you to stand on the brakes, and there are a few chicanes that need a careful approach to navigate well, like Turn 1-3 at Brazil, but there’s no analogue acceleration or braking, and no manual gears.

The game doesn’t punish you for cutting corners, barging into opponents or, indeed, anything. It’s as basic as they come.

There is, however, a Turbo Boost button, and this allows you to jump from last to second by Turn 1, which is disappointing. When you know what you’re doing, the game is far too easy.

Turbo and tyre condition are replenished by driving through an F-Zero-style pit strip at the side of the track. If you can push L while a dial is in the green, you can refill both to 100 per cent condition in an instant.

So if you turbo boost into the lane, by the time it slows you down, you’re already racing again. And with the longest races being only five laps, if you pit at the end of lap three like this, you’re very likely to win, because everyone else takes at least two stops, and they either do it slower or crash into the pit wall. 

Speaking of which, the collisions are dire. There’s zero damage, no flipping – not even any spins. Cars rub together like bars of soap, and while it’s reasonably forgiving in that you’re not frequently punted off the road, the AI does appear to deliberately ram you at times.

The game is also shockingly short. It’s artificially lengthened by forcing you to play on Novice and Veteran even when you’ve won on Expert to get all the stars, making the game nearly three times longer than it needs to be (the first two tiers have three-lap races, Expert five-lap).

Even so, beating all three difficulties on all four three-race series took me about three hours. That unlocks all the cars and a bonus USA course for Quick Race, but then there’s literally nothing left to do except hit Time Attack, which doesn’t even have online leaderboards. 

You could try to win on expert in the slower cars, or take the secret modern F1-alike (complete with harrier-style jets and a rocket stream behind it) for a spin. Acceleration is poor on that one, but when you can reach 260+mph, who cares?

You could deliberately choose the ‘Handcraft’ car, which is a pun on ‘Footwork’, as it handles like Murray Walker’s proverbial ‘barn door’. That provides a bit of a challenge, but basically, you’re having to make your own fun at that stage.

The music does deserve a mention, as it was composed by Tomoyuki Kawamura, who provided Sega Rally’s amazing soundtrack, as well as Virtua Racing’s unforgettable stings.

Like the latter, 4PGP only has music stings rather than a full racing soundtrack, and they only play when you cross the start line, so much of the early race is fought under engine sounds alone.

The final lap has more music, but it’s disappointingly generic with no memorable melodies. It’s nowhere near as good as the likes of Horizon Chase’s sonic feast. 

The graphics are deliberately retro (read: basic), with pixelated road textures, flat scenery and no weather effects, but this means the game runs like greased lightning.

At 1080p, the Switch 2 can run the game at 120fps, or maintain a solid 4K60 while docked. However, there’s no actual in-game option for this; if you have your Switch’s 120hz mode enabled, it will always do that by default. You must disable 120hz to get 4K. Took me a while, but here we are.

However, even at 4K, the graphics are shimmery with very little anti-aliasing going on, and Dreamcast-quality texture filtering on the fences in the middle distance. No shade on Dreamcast, but that console is a quarter of a century old at this point and there’s no need for this many jaggies. And coming out of the Monaco-equivalent tunnel, you see obvious draw-in across the harbour, even at 1080p, which is inexcusable. 

The game is called 4PGP for a reason – the 4-player local split screen mode lets you play the whole game with three friends, but only locally, unless you use SharePlay.

With the simple pit lane mechanism, easy control and smooth frame rate, it is an acceptable party game if you’re playing with people who don’t play racing games all the time, but I’d still argue Cruis’n Blast is more fun and accessible when played like that. And Mario Kart World is right there. 

As a final note, I have to say if you’re considering 4PGP, please, please buy New Star GP instead. It was £2.99 in the eShop sale recently and is 100 times better than this and doesn’t get half the recognition it deserves.

4PGP is not a ‘love letter to ’90s arcade racing’; it is more like an insult to everyone who really loves those games. It feels like a toy, not an arcade classic. And £24.49 on Switch 2 is way too much. Avoid, avoid, avoid. 

3/10

“If Daytona USA was LEGO Technic, this is Duplo.”