Reviews and reception
Rock Paper Shotgun (6 November 2026) called Megacity West "one of the prettiest PS1 cyberpunk burgs I've laid eyes on". PlayGround.ru (7 November 2026) praised the track variety, criticised the tank-like on-foot movement and flagged survival-race balance. No Metacritic score was listed at the time of checking.
Airframe Ultra launched on 5 November 2026, and in three days it has picked up two substantial published reviews plus a Steam hub full of argument. This page collects the reviews as reviews — with the outlet and the date — and separates them from what players are saying.
Neither review quoted here is reproduced in full. The quotes are short and attributed.
The two published reviews
Rock Paper Shotgun — 6 November 2026
The RPS piece is about the city, not the racing. Its central claim, quoted: Airframe Ultra's Megacity West is "one of the prettiest PS1 cyberpunk burgs I've laid eyes on."
The review's frame of reference is G-Police and Wipeout 2097, and its specific pleasures are environmental: "those eroded pastel chevrons", "those seductively wobbling vertices", "that electric reef of a downtown backdrop". The writer's complaint is the opposite of a complaint — they want to stop and look, and the game keeps making them race.
| What RPS praises | What RPS does not address |
|---|---|
| The art direction and the city | Netcode or performance |
| The PS1-era aesthetic as a deliberate choice | Content volume |
| The atmosphere of the shipping yards and the bay | Whether the racing is balanced |
That is a review of a place, and it is the most enthusiastic thing published about the game so far.
PlayGround.ru — 7 November 2026 (Russian)
The PlayGround piece is the gameplay review, and it is more mixed. Its concrete observations:
| Topic | The review's position |
|---|---|
| Track variety | Sewers, cliff mansions, elevated roads, dense slums |
| Hover-bike handling | "Like a wild horse pumped with helium"; the boost button frequently ends in an explosion |
| On-foot movement | Clumsy, "like a tank"; you must hold a run button |
| Melee | Four-direction punches and kicks with combos, compared to Oni |
| Wider influences | Road Rash |
| Single-player | None — online, local split-screen and bots only |
| Balance | Contested; whoever banks money and gets the AK-47 tends to win survival races |
Two things in that list conflict with other sources and are worth flagging honestly: the review says bots are available, while Steam hub threads from the same week say there are none, and Steam's own category list has no bot flag. It also lists the modes as online / split-screen / bots, with no single-player — which matches everything else.
The balance criticism is the review's sharpest point and it is a real design tension: if the arena economy decides survival races, the sprint is a shopping trip. Whether that is a flaw or the intended loop is a matter of taste, and the developers' Fast and Deadly pillar suggests they consider the combination the point.
What players are saying
The Steam hub in launch week is dominated by three arguments, and none of them are about art:
| Argument | Representative thread titles |
|---|---|
| No single-player | "No single player is a massive bummer", "lack of offline play is a deal killer", "I was really hoping for a singleplayer mode." |
| No bots | "No bots on a 'Single Player' racing game!!!!????", "Not buying until there are bots and singleplayer" |
| Performance | "please fix the lag omg", "Asian servers (or better netcode)?" |
There are also threads arguing the game is dying — "dead on arrival?", "Niche multiplayer only game launches to mixed reviews and dies in a week" — and threads arguing the opposite. Both are player reports, not measurements. The one measurement available is Steam's public player count: 230 online on 7 November.
The reception, summarised without a score
| Dimension | Where it stands |
|---|---|
| Art direction | Strongly positive across both reviews; the most-praised element |
| Handling | Divisive; described as twitchy and explosive by design |
| Combat | Compared favourably to Oni and Road Rash on foot; balance contested |
| Modes | The sore point — no single-player, contested bots |
| Performance | Player reports of lag, no official statement |
| Value | Depends entirely on whether you have people to play with |
No Metacritic score was listed for the game at the time of checking. If a site shows you one, it is either aggregated from a small sample or invented.
How to read a launch-week reception
Three days is not enough time for a considered consensus, and this is a game whose value is social — it gets better with a full lobby. A review written in a quiet launch week is measuring a different product from the one you will play in a month.
What will change the picture: the population after the Eight Days to Infamy event ends on 12 November, and the first content drop under the quarterly cadence.
Until then, the two reviews above are the best published evidence, and the is it worth it page turns them into a buy decision.