| Author | Review |
|---|
DaShAg
200,849
TA Score for this game: 1,265
Posted on 16 November 11 at 21:06, Edited on 13 March 12 at 17:52 |
This review has 16 positive votes and 0 negative votes. Please log in to vote. |
Let me start this off by saying that I love "Kart Racers", from the good old days of Mario Kart, Diddy Kong Racing and Crash Team Racing to the newer games like Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing and even Cars 2. That being said, I will stay objective during this review.
Simply put, this is just another Kart Racer, this time with the Dreamworks characters and locations. This game is a poor effort and has game-breaking flaws which stand in the way of an enjoyable experience. The character line-up is small but that reason is more due to a lacking choice of cast from the Dreamworks world. The 4 main characters of the movie are all playable, Marty, Alex, Gloria and Melman, which is expanded by the Chimps, the Penguins and King Julien. They didn't want to leave you too much empty handed so they included Shrek the ogre and Bob from Monsters & Aliens.
The game doesn't do anything new or unique, instead it thrives on the mechanics of already proven games like mentioned above. You got your Nitro meter which is filled by drifting through corners or pulling of air stunts. And of course the weapons, oh god the weapons. Usually the weapons are the most fun part about a Kart Racer, unfortunately this is not the case with Madagascar Kartz. Instead, I'm not afraid to say that they are breaking the game. All shooting weapons have homing abilities, so no need to manually aim, they will all home into your opponents driving in front of you. This is still fine but the problem lays with you being the victim. There is no way of telling when a projectile is coming for you, also there doesn't seem to be any trick to dodge. So if someone shoots at you, you're done for. This is made worse by the terrible collisions system, if the projectile will cause you to bump into the sides of the track you will completely be out of control of your Kart, resulting in a fair few places lost. Not to mention that bumping into an opponent is like suicide, your kart will once again be completely out of control. There is however a shield item but with no way of telling when you're being shot at, it's a daunting task to know when to use it.
The tracks however are pretty neat designed, fans of the movies will recognize the scenery. A real downfall to the tracks is the lack of numbers. Only 9 unique tracks in this game. While there are a few game modes with different mechanics, they all use the same tracks with the same setup, being that the 200CC championship uses mirrored tracks. The mentioned game modes include Time Trial, Checkpoint Races and Move it Move it races. The latter makes you race in front, earning you a Disco ball and you score points by driving trough gateways on the track. Not something to write home about unfortunately and the only reason you'll be playing these game modes will be for achievements. The regular championships is where it's at, divided into 50CC, 100CC, 150CC and 200CC, each with 3 cups which each have 3 tracks.
Fortunately the achievements are piss poor easy, and will take you about 6 hours to unlock them all, there are 3 achievements you need to earn in local multiplayer. My non-gaming girlfriend had no trouble at all helping me so don't be afraid to miss out on them.
Final Thoughts
As I booted up the game for the second time I took notion of the developers logo, Sidhe. I had a flashback, I've been seeing that logo a lot on a different game, hmmm which was it? Some googling brought me to, yes, Blood Drive. That game wasn't that great people, and it will come as no surprise that Blood Drive also has one of the worst collision systems I ever seen in a racing game, that explains a lot. I'm left disappointed with this game. I think the majority of people will find this game unpolished crap. As being a Kart Racer enthusiast I found it ok, but nothing fancy. It's an easy 1K and people who like Kart Racers like me will still have some fun with it.
English is not my native language, the grammar and spelling probably contain errors, please don't use that reason when judging this review, thanks.
 |
GUNSANDBUTTA
Posted on 17 January 10 at 21:00
|
This review has 1 positive vote and 3 negative votes. Please log in to vote. |
| Madagascar Karts is a very easy racing game, unlike the first Madagascar game that's was horribly glitchy and had lame and annoying achievements. I had my doubts about this game when I started it but after playing a couple of races I was surprised how enjoyable it was. If you liked the Mario Cart serious then you should enjoy this game cause it reminds me of a cheap knock off. I would defiantly not buy this game because how short the game play was. You can easily get 1000 in this game in around 8 hours or so. |