Speedrunners is free for the month of June for those of us with Xbox Live Gold. Which is kind of surprising, since it's also it's release day. Speedrunners is a game where up four players online run through a level filled with traps, twists and turns, with Mario Kart-like power ups. The screen is always moving forward, if you get too far behind, and fall off screen, you are dead. A player has to win 3 times before they win the round.
Speedrunners also offers a barebone campaign, that took me less than 2 hours to complete. Finishing the campaign unlocks weapons and stages for you to use in multiplayer, and a small list of achievements. For the hardcore achievement hunters out there: good luck. This game has a ridiculously few hardcore ones that will take many hours of grinding, and a few weapon ones that are pure luck based.
In the single player campaign, there is four stages, based around a "boss" character, the last level in that stage is a one-on-one run with that boss. The other three levels are runs against that boss, and two other bots. Playing the game on medium is definitely the sweet spot, offering up fun and tense moments against these bots. Any higher difficulty (hard or unfair mode) is an exercise in frustration and anger. The boss of that stage ALWAYS wins, and they pull off flawless runs that would take hours and hours of grinding to beat. The game is very, very unfun playing in these situations.
As you run through the level and you outrun the first 2 bots, the screen starts to shake and get red. A few seconds later, it will get smaller and music will steadily get faster, which creates excellent tension. Finally, the screen is shrunk to both players can barely fit on the screen. In these moments it is exhilirating when you vs AI or you vs another player can go move for move for an extended time, trying to see who breaks first. A big problem though, is framerate issues. They dropped on me quite frequently, and when the game lags it is very hard to stay on track in the game. I actually started to feel nauseated playing online due to the frequency of lag drops and their severity.
Another frustrating issue is that when you are in a tight race, and the screen does start to get small, the leader can actually die easier. The game relies on the player knowing short cuts in the dozen plus levels you race through, but in a tight race I have died numerous time taking a short cut that would lead me a lower part of the level, but instead of the screen following me down and killing the player ontop, it kills me. So you get penalized for knowing the best route. And there are other times when your opponent is totally off screen and yet they don't die. Consistency is definitely not applied across the board.
I've spent a couple hours in the multiplayer, where you have to grind XP in the quick matches before ranked matches open up. On launch day the multiplayer has lagging issues. A large majority of my matches were hampered with match changing lag and falling framerates, something I can never justify in a game. Which is a shame, because the multiplayer isn't THAT bad. It's not great, because it's very repetitive and your amount of fun will vary drastically based on the skill of the other 3 players, but it is serviceable when running normal. The powerups, while few in number, can turn the tide of the match, especially the ultra-strong grapple, which grapples the runner in front of you, propels you past them, and for good measure sends them backwards. There is also a homing missile, a crater that acts like a bowling ball, crates (their version of banana peels), which literally come in 1 or 3s like Mario Kart, a freeze ray and a drill that lets you speed past runners and knocking them aside as you turn into, well, a drill. There isn't the biggest amount of variety here, but again, it's serviceable.
There is some fun too be had here, but that ran out pretty quick for me. I can't even really recommend it as a party game because this game is really only as fun as your skill level. Four drunk people might have a little bit of fun with it, but after someone wins three or four in a row, I doubt they'll keep playing. With a barebones campaign, a multiplayer system that makes you grind for XP with unreliable servers, and some odd level designs, it's hard to play this one for long periods. I doubt I'll return to it much. Speedrunners is what it is: a small package for a cheap price (free for a month and then $10 CDN) that will see the hardcore rise to the top very quickly. It wouldn't be surprising to see the developers try to pump out DLC levels and weapons, but I doubt there will be enough of a fanbase to support it.