Review: Touring Karts
This is actually a pretty great Mario Kart clone
I’ve been playing it in first person with motion controller steering. One-handing around corners while you grab a weapon box and fling the resulting chicken at a competitor is pretty great.
Everything from the steering to the ‘boost when you nail the drift’ mechanic is pretty arcadey, but that’s all good. It all gels with the giant hazards that tumble around the track, the ludicrous weapon combos that stack up, and the chained boosts that can see you scudding past rivals in an arial attack
There’s a load of simple motivators stuffed in too, from the car upgrade lootboxes, to the track unlocks via race challenges (‘squash five cars with a giant chicken’), to speed buffs from every weapon hit.
What elevates it all is the sheer cumulative carnage. The tracks aren’t always the most inspired in shape, but somehow the various ignoble deaths by giant robot legs haven’t felt grievously unfair, and the times you carve a path through the valley of cartoon death have felt great. Both happen frequently in a race.
Chaining boosts up ramps, steering through the air, fly-drifting between giant clashing hammers. Combining power-ups to create a chicken bazooka on the fly. Watching a shadow spread as a giant monkey flies overhead in a giant UFO, and you wonder if he's going to chuck a keg of dynamite on your head, like the one in a zeppelin above the finishing line. Scooting over the tip of a tentacle to gain a boost before it rears out of its hole and slams you... The general melee of suddenly gigantified cars, cars sliding by encased in iceblocks, and sudden spicy chickens to the face. It’s all good cartoon fun
If the tracks themselves just had that final extra twist of Mario Kart pizzazz, it'd be arcade grandeur from start to finish.
EDIT: Having encountered some bugs in later tracks which are a touch more shovelware than shiny, I've knocked some points off the rating. But on the plus side the driving model for the top tier cars is slightly less arcade-shonk. Slightly
++ [possible nausea]