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Daily Mirror
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Fast Fusion review – anti-gravity racer offers brings 60fps fun to Switch 2
Shin'en Multimedia returns with another excellent, high-speed entry into its anti-gravity racing series, retaining what works with some small appreciated adjustments. Fast Fusion tears up the anti-gravity track for a fourth time thanks to improved visuals and framerate, which allows you to feel the high-speed thrill of futuristic racing like never before only on Nintendo Switch 2. It must be the law that whenever a new Nintendo console launches, so too will an anti-gravity racing game developed by Shin'en Multimedia soon after. For four – count them, four! – straight generations now the studio has been on hand to provide fast-paced racing nirvana, first launching its F-Zero and Wipeout inspired series with 2011's Fast Racing League on Wii, followed by Fast Racing Neo on Wii U, and then the simply titled Fast RMX in 2017 on Nintendo Switch. Fast forward to today and the studio is back (as is tradition) with the equally brilliant Fast Fusion for the Nintendo Switch 2. Surprising absolutely no-one it's yet another stylish futuristic racer that excels in delivering high-speed thrills with little to no frills – this time complete with a fresh new fusion mechanic. Anyone familiar with the series up until this point will feel right at home with Fast Fusion. You work your way through a series of three-circuit tournaments while trying to stay on the track racing a high-powered anti-gravity racing machine. With the ability to drive into orbs that enable you to engage a boost to let you race even faster, it's a clear harken back to the days when minimalist racers dominated the early 3D era of racers using stripped-back control schemes and super sleek aesthetic design. Given Nintendo itself hasn't released a proper console F-Zero game since 2003's GX, Shin'en Multimedia's continued attempts at recapturing this style of racer have been forever welcome. Doubly so on the Nintendo Switch 2 with Fast Fusion, it turns out, since for the very first time I got the sense while playing that this is the first proper Fast series entry to not have to compromise due to old hardware or technical limitation. The extra oomph in horsepower the new hybrid console provides is immediately noticeable upon firing up this latest anti-gravity racer, where playing in handheld mode means getting to enjoy silky smooth 60fps at 1080p, with the resolution increasing to 4K when played on the big screen. Such a difference in framerate and resolution truly benefits Fast Fusion, since the sense of speed feels the fastest and smoothest it has ever been. Even outside of technical performance, however, Fast Fusion brings the heat with a great selection of varied track designs and environmental course themes. While it's a tad disappointing to know that there's only 12 tracks in total to race on (less than half of what's available in Mario Kart World) all excel in making every bend, corner, and chicane matter. One thing that always surprised me the more I explored Fast Fusion's racing delights was the sense of weight these hulking, metal vehicles offer. Leaping into the air in search of more boost orbs or coins only to come crashing down onto the track feels satisfyingly hefty, giving races a sense of drama and intensity other indie racers could only dream of. Need for speed Speaking honestly, most of what Fast Fusion does well are elements that Shin'en Multimedia has already executed pretty perfectly with previous entries. Finding sly shortcuts by venturing off track early, engaging boosts at the correct time, and switching between blue and red modes to take advantage of on-track boost strips are all present and accounted for again. It's really only the new hyper jump ability that forces you to consider your actions on the track slightly more strategically. However, the number of vehicles you can pilot has been stepped up thanks to the new titular mechanic, which genuinely does bring a new level of excitement to the same familiar yet fun high-speed races. At any point in between tournaments you can visit the Fusion shop to not just unlock new vehicles boasting different, better stats using any money earned, but fuse any two of them together also. As such, while picking two higher-tier vehicles for fusion might see them taken off the track, it often leads to more powerful vehicles with increased speed, acceleration, and boost to become available in your racing roster. Competing without these beasts in the early hours works perfectly fine to maintain your lead in races across icescapes, neon cities, and abandoned woodland, but eventually new fusion vehicles become essential to hold your own in tournaments played on the toughest difficulty level. Thankfully, Fast Fusion encourages plenty of experimentation with its fusion mechanic thanks to the ability to break a vehicle back into two for a small cost. I didn't need to rely on this too much, however, since the game always provides a handy rating to indicate the kind of quality the outcome vehicle will be following fusion, although its exact properties are kept a mystery up until after. Overall, the fusion mechanic isn't significantly game-changing in terms of the way you should approach races on the track, but it does add another string to the bow of this already stylish racing package that makes for a good deal of personalisation that wasn't there before. To the extent that I'll be gutted if the mechanic doesn't return in the hypothetical Nintendo Switch 3's eventual instalment. Fast Fusion isn't too dissimilar to what's come before in the series, yet this hasn't stopped Shin'en Multimedia from nipping and tucking its anti-gravity racing formula marginally to find ways that make it more even more exciting but still pure. Careening around bends and clashing into rival vehicles is still as intensely thrilling as it has been for over 10 years. However, thanks to improved visuals and framerate that do real justice to the franchise's futuristic inclinations, the new hyper jump ability, and the surprisingly flexible fusion mechanic, racing through stylish circuits at a fast pace has been given additional depth and dimensions.
Metro
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
Fast Fusion review - 4K and 60fps on the Nintendo Switch 2
Fast Fusion – not F-Zero but it'll have to do (Shin'en) Nintendo might not want to make a new F-Zero game but the creators of Fast RMX do, with a sequel that has some of the best graphics on Switch 2. Much has been said about how Nintendo is in a slightly awkward position with the Switch 2, in that most of its major franchises were so expertly revamped and perfected on the Switch 1 that it's hard to know where to go with them from here. Do they try to reimagine Zelda once again? Or make Smash Bros. even bigger in scale? Or do they continue with more iterative and less ambitious sequels? Or maybe they should focus on other forgotten franchises… like F-Zero. Nintendo's explanation for why there hasn't been a new F-Zero in over two decades (except for online title F-Zero 99) is that there's no point unless they can come up with something new for it, especially as it's never been a big seller, that can get by on just its name. As the inspiration for WipEout, F-Zero is the quintessential future racer and its greatest entry is GameCube title F-Zero GX, which technically is a Switch 2 launch title, as it's now available as part of Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack. But if you crave something new there is an alternative, in the form of loving tribute Fast Fusion. German developer Shin'en has been making F-Zero clones since the Wii era, all with different names but always starting with word Fast. Fast RMX was a launch title for the original Switch and now we have Fast Fusion, which suffers from all the same pros and cons as the previous titles. As if to make Nintendo's point, there's precious little innovation here but what it does have is a blistering sense of speed and some of the best graphics on the Switch 2. Unlike F-Zero and WipEout, there's very little context given for Fast Fusion's races. Not only is there no attempt at a story, or even any characters, but there's no explanation for what's going on or where you are. The implication is that you're taking part in a futuristic racing championship but there's zero worldbuilding, beyond some vaguely sci-fi sounding names in the leaderboard. That doesn't really matter though and once in a race you can instantly see where all the effort has gone, with some really quite stunning visuals for a launch game. Mario Kart World's cartoon style has made it difficult to gauge exactly how powerful the Switch 2 is, but Fast Fusion frequently looks like a higher end PlayStation 4 game, and certainly much better than Fast RMX. Expert, exclusive gaming analysis Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. If you don't know what F-Zero, or WipEout, is then it doesn't matter, because it's not a complex concept: imagine Formula One but in the future, with anti-gravity cars and roller coaster style tracks, and that's pretty much it. WipEout had weapons and power-ups, but F-Zero and Fast Fusion do not. Instead, Fast Fusion has a boost that is, slightly counter-intuitively, activated by collecting enough coins to fill up a bar. But you can also get a boost from driving over differently coloured chevrons, while manually switching colours between red and blue, so as to match the colour on the ground – or otherwise you slow down instead of speeding up. There's also a very powerful jump and the ability to lean left and right, but those are more advanced techniques that are not necessary at first. You can knock into enemies, to send them spinning, but there isn't really an attack ability, which is something of a shame because if you or an opponent hit an obstacle you explode in a rather nice crash. Red sky at night, future racer's delight (Shin'en) Although the game has the worst rubber band AI we think we've ever experienced, and the vehicles feel a bit lightweight in terms of handling, races are a lot of fun. The track design can seem a little pedestrian (we've been spoilt by the overabundance of shortcuts in Mario Kart World) but the sheer spectacle of it all keeps your interest. If you're wondering about the name, there is a fusion process, similar to the Shin Megami Tensei series, where you can put two vehicles together, to fuse them together and get a blend of both their stats and their physical appearance. That's kind of neat but there's only three stats and there's not a lot of thought needed for which ones to splice together. This costs money to do, naturally, but while the standard game mode is similar to the Grand Prix system from Mario Kart you have to pay to unlock subsequent cups, which we wish we'd known the first time, before we spent all our money on new cars and fusions. Although it's a regular irritation when you have to repeat a whole cup, or waste time in Time Attack, just to earn a few more credits to play a new one. There's also Super Hero mode, where if you crash that's it (it's basically iron man mode, in other words). That's as frustrating as it sounds and so too, unfortunately, is the online multiplayer. There's up to four-player split screen, which is great, but there's no matchmaking for online so you either race with a friend via GameChat or… you don't race online at all. Again, it all comes back to the visuals, with 12 highly varied tracks that range from a redwood forest to deserts with sand whales jump out around you, to a race in an asteroid belt and around a futuristic city. There are four separate graphics options in TV mode, two of which are 4K, although this results in a slight blurriness that we assume is a result of upscaling rather than being a native resolution – so we stuck with the performance option, although only the Ultra Quality option is not 60fps. Fast Fusion is rough around the edges in almost every respect and, apart from its graphics, shows little real improvement over its eight-year-old predecessor. Its low price excuses a lot of its problems but at the same time it fails to address Nintendo's problem, of how to introduce new concepts to the formula. And yet between this and the GameCube games on Switch 2, this is a good as F-Zero fans have eaten in a long time. Fast Fusion review summary In Short: The best F-Zero clone since Fast RMX, with some extremely impressive visuals for a Switch 2 launch game, although the structure and track design lack Nintendo's finesse. Pros: Fantastic graphics, with a ton of options in both TV and portable mode. Solid racing action and dizzying sense of speed, especially in the higher championship levels. Four-player split screen and surprisingly cheap. Cons: The track design lacks flair and the championship structure is very irritating. Outrageously cheating rubber band AI. Vehicle fusion adds very little and online multiplayer is extremely limited. Score: 7/10 Formats: Nintendo Switch 2 Price: £13.49 Publisher: Shin'en Developer: Shin'en Release Date: 5th June 2025 Age Rating: 3 The graphics are really great (Shin'en) Email gamecentral@ leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader's Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. 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