Ah, kart racing — a genre popularized by Nintendo’s Super Mario Kart over twenty-five years ago. Many licensed franchises intended for the younger demographic have had kart games released, and the latest of these is Nickelodeon Kart Racers from GameMill Entertainment and Bamtang. With gallons of virtual green slime, twelve characters, and twenty-four tracks, the Slime Grand Prix is available now on current gen consoles.
GameMill has a history of doing games based off of licenses including Hotel Transylvania, Big Hero 6, Monster Jam — and to be transparent, their games aren’t going to make any AAA top ten lists. Still, I went into Nickelodeon Kart Racers (NKR) as a fan of kart racing. I wasn’t familiar with most of the playable characters, which include the four ninja turtles (ok, I am familiar with them), Spongebob, Patrick Star, and Sandy Cheeks from SpongBob Squarepants, Arnold and Helga from Hey Arnold!, and three from Rugrats — Angelica, Reptar, and Tommy Pickles. This is actually the first Nickelodeon title to feature the Ninja Turtles in it, by the way. Weighing in at only about 550MB, I knew this game was going to be pretty basic in terms of visual fidelity and content, but file size does not say anything about how good and fun the game will be.
NKR offers both single player and offline multiplayer for up to four players. Within single player, three modes are available and they’re unlocked from the start — Grand Prix, Free Race, and Time Attack. Grand Prix, not unlike Mario Kart, features different sets of four-track races that comprise a Cup. Meanwhile, multiplayer mode maintains Grand Prix and Free Race, but exchanges Time Attack for Battle Arena. The Arena has three types of play: Free For All, Capture the Flag, and Tag, which is a lot like the Coin Rush mode in Mario Kart 7, where players are meant to race around collecting coins to see who can accumulate the most in the given time. Modes can be played solo or in team mode, too.
I spent the majority of my time with NKR to this point playing solo in single player modes. As you play, XP is earned and you’ll level up and also collect points to spend on upgrades. Upgrades can be spent in the Shop from the main menu to purchase upgraded Tires, Engines, Spoilers, Jet Skis, and Paint. Changing your paint job is just cosmetic, but the other items can cause changes to your kart’s speed, acceleration, traction, handling, and slime handling. Like Mario Kart, before beginning a race event you will pick not only your driver, but outfit your kart before jumping in.
Actually playing NKR is ok, but not all that exciting, nor for long. One persistent mechanic is the green slime that Nickelodeon is (or at least used to be back when I was watching the channel) known for. As you drive through slime, which is slippery, you begin to fill up your slime bar. You can use a third of your bar to do a turbo boost, which is like getting a mushroom in Mario Kart. Power-ups are found in green boxes (sometimes it feels like there is too much green on screen). There are several power-ups and they vary by character, including a sewer lid for the ninja turtles that acts as a shield. An extra cheesy pizza is an offensive attack that the turtles can use, while other power-ups include footballs, a Mighty Spatula that hits the racer in first place, Reptar’s ability to shoot multiple fireballs, and a bunch more. These power-ups give the characters some uniqueness to them beyond their looks and sounds, and gives the game a much needed boost in content and intrigue. Also, there are some co-op power-ups where each player must have a certain power-up, but when combined, like the Hammer, can significantly alter the state of a team race.
The tracks are pretty good, and are naturally fitting to the universes that the different characters are from. Sewers, rooms with toys from Rugrats, the school from Hey Arnold!, and so on. Slime-filled versions of these tracks or areas with lots of slime put your kart automatically into jet ski mode, a modest change of pace to the feel of the race. I can’t say any of the tracks really stand out from one another, they’re all serviceable but not particularly memorable.
In a similar the vein, the graphics and sound get the job done, but do leave a lot to be desired. Graphically, the game looks quite dated. The music is, well, bad — and the effects, while capturing some of the characters’ uniqueness, is still pretty flat. Likewise in general for the game, while there is some fun to be had, especially in local multiplayer, the overall experience is more underwhelming than not. That makes this game very difficult to recommend to all but the most ardent kart racing or Nickelodeon fans. Even within those camps, who are more apt to overlook flaws with NKR, the experience leaves a lot to be desired.
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