Ah, the neverending challenge of figuring out how to score games that are priced to be budget-friendly and may not shoot for the moon, but still manage to at least be decent. It’s a constant struggle that I feel, and it can be difficult to balance being fair to games that appear to meet their overall goals, even when perhaps modest, and being sure to help people avoid poor investments for their time and money. As you may have guessed, Speed Factor is the sort of title I struggle with, failing to be incredibly ambitious but also managing to make for a playable retro-styled racer that does pose a reasonable challenge.

For retro racing fans, it won’t take long to assume that the inspiration for this game’s style comes from the likes of the classic arcade racer OutRun. While its environments aren’t as detailed or lush, its more limited scenery does at least allow it to make up for it, with quite an intense feeling of speed as you go flying down straightaways and careening through turns. As you’d expect from classic racers, there isn’t much in the way of technique here, for the most part you’re going to just try to hit the turns effectively. But most of the time you won’t need to let off the gas, even when you’re turbo boosted.

What sets the game apart is actually tied to your nitros and the free boosts and refills you’ll encounter on the track in each race. One oddity here is that your car’s top speed generally feels slower than that of your toughest competitors, with them catching up to and even passing you slowly if you don’t keep yourself boosted. That does change the feel of the races to some degree, and actually requires a little bit of strategy and judicious use of what you have, in order to get into first place and then stay there. Your greatest enemy is colliding with other cars, which will slow you down greatly while shoving the other car ahead. In order to win that means you’ll need to take care not to make too much contact, carefully use your boosts periodically to avoid running out down the stretch, and be sure to keep the position of everything you can grab on the track in your mind so you won’t miss anything. While it’s hardly a masterpiece of gaming, for the price it’s at least a decent challenge that has a solid retro-styled feel and performs nicely.