Obliterberated!
If you’re coming to Obliteracers in the hope of a competent Mario Kart clone; then I’m sorry to dash your hopes. Obliteracers comes across more like a mobile game than a kinetic action racer.
Instead of the tried and true karting formula, Obliteracers opts for more of a quick, challenge based style of gameplay. Each race has its own objective that awards the driver that reaches the required target score first. These will range from the first player to take out 10 other racers, or being the last racer standing. But the oddest thing is that when a point is scored, the race is reset. This leads to a very disjointed experience, and one that zaps away the fun.
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One (Reviewed)
Price: $14.99
Multiplayer: Yes
There are a few occasions where players will be pitted against just one other car, and these resemble more of the action that karting fans are used to. But these are few and far between, and still lacks excitement as they are only against one opponent. There are only four types of race, which also leads to the game becoming repetitive quite quickly.
It also didn’t help that the camera angle often hindered my play. The game opts for more of an isometric viewpoint, as opposed to the standard view from behind the racers, while also always focusing on the main crowd instead of my car. This meant that every time I dropped away from the action, I lost sight of my car. This then resulted in me falling off the track and getting eliminated from the round. There wasn’t a single race where this didn’t happen.
On the plus side, there is a nice variety of tracks to race on, varied and colorful in design and each optimized for the challenge at hand. It’s just a shame that I couldn’t take them all in, as I was too busy focused on staying on the track. The weapons are also well designed and suit the game well. Machine guns, oil slicks, rockets and mines are just some of the tools available. All of them do their job well and are easy enough to use. It’s just a shame that the core gameplay lets the experience down.
Multiplayer is on offer here, with both online and offline options. It’s these modes that offer up the most variety, with many of the settings being opened up for customization; including the addition of modifiers that can change up the game play dramatically. However, I did find it difficult to get in to an online match, maybe as the game isn’t super popular. But there is at least the offline mode, if you’re lucky enough to have real friends to play with.
All in all, Obliteracers feels like a missed opportunity. There are some great ideas buried here. But missteps with the gameplay mechanics means that this game is likely to fall behind the pack when it comes to action racing games.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
