I got slimed on this one.
I grew up on Nickelodeon and Mario Kart. Both seemed to work pretty well with each other, and it makes sense to have a kart racer with Nickelodeon characters. It can’t be that difficult, right? Well, yes and no apparently. While Nickelodeon Kart Racers isn’t a bad game per se, it is most certainly lacking in a few categories that makes it compete with the likes of the Mario Kart franchise.
There are four main properties that the game takes from – Hey Arnold!, Rugrats, SpongeBob SquarePants, and The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Players take on both single races and tournaments in order to unlock new parts for their karts. This can be done by collecting coins throughout the race track or by participating in a victory lap that comes after winning a circuit or leveling up the player’s profile.
Platforms: PS4, XB1, Switch
MSRP: $39.99
Price I’d pay: $15
The act of racing is much like Mario Kart 8. All the way down to the drifting around turns to get a little boost in speed. Racers can hit item boxes that give them items to either throw behind them or in front of them to hit and stun an opponent. These come in the form of the classic TV shows’ items. Tommy’s baby bottle, a sewer manhole cover, and footballs for “Football-head” Arnold are just a few added to the arsenal. One unique aspect of Nickelodeon Kart Racers is the slime mechanic. At certain points during a race, racers can hit a switch on the track to activate Slime Time. Slime will then spill onto the track and racers that run over the slime will fill up a slime meter. This meter acts like a turbo meter.
Players can activate the slime turbo for a boost of speed, and with a full meter, hitting another racer while booting will stun them. Taking a page out of Sonic and All-Star Racing Transformed, it has morphing tracks as well as morphing karts. Some stages will turn into slime rivers and lakes that the karts then turn into boats to cross. In fact, there are some tracks that are purely slime. This allows for a lot of boosting using the slime meter. It all feels familiar and while the racing itself is not bad or broken, everything surrounding it is what’s really lacking.
The biggest and most jarring thing to me was the lack of voice acting. At all. With Nickelodeon characters, I would have thought they would have at least gotten some voice talent, even if it was imitation to throw in a few lines here and there, but instead, we get dialog boxes saying “In your face!” and “BOOM!” when I hit someone with an item. Honestly, it was jarring not hearing anything other than the bland music used for each track. On top of that, we have four Nickelodeon properties, one of which, is all four Ninja Turtles. Why not go into the Nickelodeon past and get some Rocko’s Modern Life or Aahhh! Real Monsters? Where’s Doug Funnie and Skeeter Valentine? Hell, bring in Alanis Morissette from You Can’t Do That on Television. (Ok, that last one is pretty much a joke…or is it?) There’s tons of potential here and I feel like it was squandered.
There are also local multiplayer offerings that come in the form of races and arena style modes. Unfortunately, there is no online component to this game, which could have helped out in the fun factor some. The only thing that compels players to keep playing is by collecting upgrades for the karts by doing races. That’s about it.
While not inherently bad, Nickelodeon Kart Racers just feels a bit bland. The racing is totally fine and I had some decent races here and there when I bumped up the difficulty, but with a limited roster of characters from only four franchises, it boils down to a limited feature overall, and for 40 bucks, I would say that is a steep price to pay for something that I could be done with in about a weekend. Players looking for another kart racer and have experienced their fill of Mario Kart can find some fun here, but I would most certainly wait for a price drop. Even then, don’t go looking here for a bountiful game. There a fun one-off experience and that’s about it.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
