Unlocked the second row of tracks in Ring Racers and the amount of fun I'm having with this game is very quickly evaporating. Everything hits SO HARD and tracks get SO COMPLEX and the AI rubberbands to catch up with you SO EASILY that I have reached a point of feeling completely overwhelmed by frustration at this game.
It's great that they have an "everything and the kitchen sink" approach to the tracks they include. Like no idea was ever considered bad or too outrageous or too complicated. But I also feel like there are tracks in this game (and even in SRB2 Kart before it) that would have been cut in a more mainstream product for being esoteric and too unfriendly to anyone but the development team.
I've blinked near bumper mines that launched me with such force it sent me backwards half a lap. On something like the Gumball Machine track a bumper mine will probably actually send you back an entire lap if you hit it just the right way. It doesn't even have to be a bumper mine, either. I got invincibility and tried to plow through someone with some shark missiles and it bounced me away about as strong as a bumper mine would have.
There are tracks where a "shortcut" will actually put you driving the wrong direction, like they expect you to blast through a speed barrier at top speed, and then figure out how to flip a U-Turn and still maintain the advantage of that shortcut.
And the entire Balloon Park track could have only been made by someone with a deeply black heart. I have never in my life ever seen a kart racer track that's trying to make you lose the race. Every single turn of that thing is a new, awful nightmare you have to figure out how to steer around while worrying about how if any of the eight other racers even so much as breathe on you then you're never going to recover.
Even the Crash Team Racing remake was more forgiving than this, and I hate that game and refused to play it once I finished my review.
I have never played any racing game that has made me feel more dejected and miserable than Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers. Once you clear the first set of tracks and see the credits roll, it turns in to a playable headache. I feel like I swallowed a nuclear warhead playing this game tonight.
That's the last time I'm touching this thing until I hear about serious balance changes.