It’s been a while since the “Hot Import Nights” banner has been attached to a game, with the latest being Cyber Clutch: Hot Import Nights which recently exited Steam Early Access thanks to new publisher Current Games. This is a cyberpunk vehicular combat game, and while it’s premise is full of promise, it’s almost immediately squanders its potential. There’s nothing offensively bad here, the game just doesn’t come together in the ways it should to feel like a complete experience. Really, Cyber Clutch: Hot Import Nights feels like rolling the car onto the track as it’s still being built, and that’s when the wheels fall off.
Despite the amazing backdrop of a cyberpunk city, dystopia, and vehicular combat, there’s no story to be found. This once Early Access game feels rushed out the door and really could have used some more development time to tighten up areas. The racing works on a basic level, but the combat part is not always fun, and just always feels like it is on the cusp of being something special that never feels beyond basic.
There’s a tutorial that helps wrap yourself around the controls and the basics, but it’s not something you probably haven’t already played. The main single-player mode to play is Grand Circuit, it sends you through five racing cups, each with three races each. Completing each cup in first place unlocks a special reward like a car or wheel cosmetic item, so there’s some sort of progression. After you complete those series, there’s Grand Circuit Expert which is just a more challenging version of what you just played, to include the same cups in the same order. It’s not very riveting or exciting, but it does contain a different set of rewards to unlock that you can only obtain through playing it.
Cyber Clutch: Hot Import Nights has seven tracks to race on, with seven reverse variants giving you fourteen in total. Each of them vary in time of day, weather, and overall design. Some tracks have enclosed spaces, others have sections of road that you can fly off into oblivion. While they aren’t super memorable, they all offer something unique. Outside of the racing series, there is a quick race mode. It lets you handpick which tracks you want to race on, but without any unlocks to gain, there’s little reason to play this mode. With all the single-player modes in total, you’ll see everything the game has to offer in just under five hours.
There’s a shocking twenty cars in the game, but none of them are licensed, though they all resemble car makers or specific models upon closer inspection. The “Vixen” looks like an Audi, “Torcher” appears like a Ford GT, the “Titan” is like a modern day Mustang GT, “Shark” looks like a BMW, and “Raven” is like a Challenger. The car designs are actually awesome, and maybe my favorite thing in the game. They all resemble real cars either just from the back or the front, and then are mashed with something else to give it a distinct look. Each car has a unique set of weapons and abilities. It’ll take some practice to settle in to what kind of car you like to drive, as well. Cars are ordered by class: light, medium, and heavy. The heavy cars have fast top speeds and a lot of armor, whereas light vehicles have little armor and accelerate quickly, and then medium class cars rest in the middle. Aside from the carnage that occurs once a race begins, things to begin to spread out and if you’re in the lead, you can often avoid the combat part almost entirely.
There’s a number of cars that are unlocked as race rewards from the grand circuit mode. Then there are cars that you must spend currency to unlock. Completing races accumulates the currency you’ll be spending. Though in time you’ll have an abundance of it, where it can be spent on customization parts. You can modify the hood, fenders, spoiler, wheels, and colors with ease and few coin. But these purchases don’t offer any benefit as they are only cosmetic. The level of customization is not incredibly deep, but it’s enough that I felt a compulsion to modify every vehicle in my garage to some extent.
Spending time in the single-player modes you’ll be interacting with the enemy AI; it’s inconsistent, at best. There’s a weapon pick-up that’s essentially an orbital cannon where if you’ve sustained enough damage and haven’t repaired or picked up armor to replenish yourself, it can kill you in one strike. The enemy AI gets this pick-up constantly, and if you’re in first place most of the race, they initiate this blue shell of attack, unrelentingly. Now it’s a fantastic strategy to keep you out of the lead, but completely unfair as I ever only got to use it myself a handful of times. When the enemies aren’t obliterating you from space, they are flinging themselves off the track without rhyme or reason. It’s just an experience that’s frustrating one way or another.
The game is often buggy. The game’s achievements are completely broken, as all 32 achievements don’t activate no matter what you do. In fact, no one on Steam has achievements for it. I’ve also had the sound inexplicably drop out during a race, to include the soundtrack surprisingly. Sometimes my car has been stuck on random pieces of geometry, or the physics behaved improperly. These issues don’t do the game any favors.
At least on Steam, I can say that the multiplayer mode is dead on arrival. There’s no server browser, so you’re you’ll have to resort to the matchmaking, which will not find anyone. The game does support cross-play on Steam, Epic Games Store, and Xbox currently, but that doesn’t help find others to play against. While the game is out on PlayStation, it currently is not included in cross-play, which hurts the player base as a whole.
In a lot of ways, this game looks like it could fit in Cyberpunk 2077. At times, the visuals lack clarity and things can look blurry. However, performance is top notch as I was able to get 120-140fps consistently. It’s a really pretty game where the visuals does a lot of the heavy lifting because the rest of the game can’t bear the weight.
My PC Specs:
– Linux (6.16.0-5-cachyos)
– Intel Core i9 13900K @ 5.8GHz
– ASUS ROG RYUJIN II 360 ARGB AIO Liquid CPU Cooler
– G.SKILL TRIDENT Z5 6000MHZ 64GB (32×2) DDR5 RAM
– ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 4080 16GB GDDR6X
– WD_BLACK SN850X M.2 (4 TB)
– LG UltraGear 34GP950B-G (21:9 Ultrawide @ 3440×1440)
The price of admission for Cyber Clutch: Hot Import Nights seems about right, actually. You could do far worse for $15, but there’s far too many bugs, is lean on modes, and just lacks refinement. All is not lost, this is a game that if you dig deep enough you might find something to latch onto. It reminds me of late 90s or early 2000s car combat games which offers a bit of nostalgia for those who were around then. But like those games were for me then, this feels like it’s just a weekend rental. I still don’t know where “Hot Import Nights” fits in to this game. Cyber Clutch: Hot Import Nights lacks anything compelling to keep you coming back, and is ultimately just perfunctory.
A Steam code was provided by the publisher for review purposes
