Nickelodeon Kart Racers (PS4)

One of the main appeals of a crossover is seeing many characters from series that usually don’t interact joining together in one piece of media, and with Nickelodeon’s wide range of cartoons to draw from, a kart racer bringing them together sounds like a fun idea. With shows like Ren & Stimpy, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and The Fairly Odd Parents, there was quite a lot of material to draw from, which is why it feels strange none of those series were featured in Nickelodeon Kart Racers and instead only four get any representation whatsoever. On the other hand though, despite lacking things like any sort of voice acting that could bring some of the characters featured to life, the game does try to dig in a bit deeper with the four franchises it does feature in regards to other aspects of the experience.

 

Nickelodeon Kart Racers brings together SpongeBob SquarePants, Hey Arnold!, Rugrats, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for its racers and featured locations, although it’s not quite an even sort of representation. You’re able to race as all of the four main turtles from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but Hey Arnold! is only represented by Helga and Arnold, both of which have received slight redesigns to make them look younger. SpongeBob, Patrick, and Sandy from SpongeBob SquarePants received a similar treatment well before shows like Kamp Koral were released, but this does at least make them all feel a little less strange racing the actual babies Tommy and Angelica from Rugrats. Reptar is present as well, the dinosaur fictional within the context of the Rugrats universe but still a fun inclusion to round out a roster that still feels rather lacking in terms of representation. However, in this racing game, there is more to a character selection than just picking a face you recognize, as the items you can use to interfere with other racers are character dependent.

Grabbing boxes at certain locations on the tracks will give you a somewhat random tool you can use, everyone having access to a similar group initially like baby bottle rockets that fire forward to disrupt racers or manhole covers that can hang behind your cart to protect it from incoming attacks. Different positions in the race will see different items cropping up so something like the Flying Dutchman’s Ship that you transform into to become invincible and super fast only goes to people doing poorly, but depending on your character you might also have a unique item only you will be able to use pop up in the roulette. Here you can see the game trying to be a bit more creative in how the powers are sourced and what they do, like Helga having her gum sculpture of Arnold mess with the wheels of other racers or having Patrick’s pet rock Pete serves as a rapid fire projectile that keeps the space in front of him dangerous for a while. With characters like SpongeBob having a power where jellyfish cover the vision of other racers you can expect some special disruptions to the races, especially since no matter how well you’re performing the game is usually kind enough to give you your character’s unique item on the final lap for an added dash of spice for that final stretch. While you can see a lot of of obvious Mario Kart inspiration in certain items and things like the bubbles are just a brand-appropriate reskin for oil slicks, the selection is made more interesting by giving everyone a special tool only they can access that is allowed to shake things up with none of those character-dependent ones being so powerful they become bothersome.

 

The race tracks are definitely where Nickelodeon Kart Racers shows its love to the unfortunately small amount of franchises it was allowed to adapt. If you’re racing through the undersea city of Bikini Bottom you’ll be able to spot many recognizable buildings like Mrs. Puff’s Boating School by the road side, in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles inspired sewer stages they threw in things like Master Splinter and Shredder fighting above the track to make it feel more like it has a tie to the turtles, and in the Rugrats toy store levels where everyone is shrunken down you can easily spot single episode callbacks like Boppo and Mr. Tippy in the store’s selections. Besides some big jellyfish in some SpongeBob themed levels though these are mostly part of the set dressing rather than something to interact with, but driving through the school P.S. 118 from Hey Arnold! or seeing advertisements for Big Bob’s Beepers on the road does make the game feel like it wants to be faithful visually even if it tries to keep the actual track substance fairly clean and safe.

 

That isn’t to say the race tracks in Nickelodeon Kart Racers are boring or unimaginative though, many even changing their layout a bit between laps and hazards like land mines or barriers do ensure there’s more than other racers to worry about. More interestingly though the game allows the karts to shift between normal driving, gliding, and racing over slime which works similarly to water. These all do play a bit differently, the kart driving simple and responsive with a drifting option to gain speed boosts for leaning into risky turns, the gliding a bit weird in how it controls but you can angle high or low to change how far you fly, and the boating makes turning much looser since traction is out of the picture. Gliding is often just part of a large jump or a way to clear a certain segment of track faster if you hit a jump, but there are levels that mix the three forms of racing and others that will focus in solely on driving or boating. The boating levels are usually just a familiar setting now coated in Nickelodeon’s recognizable green slime for you to race on, but they do play differently and change up their layouts to accommodate it some and the game is able to fill a few different tournament cups with races that do feel like they’re on unique tracks before you wrap up with a few remix cups combining previous tracks.

While things can feel a little lifeless with how quiet the characters are even with some decent animations to make up for it, the racing does get a bit more life injected into it with some true deviations from the fairly standard kart racing formula. The first comes in the form of slime, this being a resource you’ll gather in a few different ways. Usually this will come from areas of track with a bit of slime coating, your cart vacuuming it up if you race near to it to add to your slime tank. Once your tank is full enough, you can use that slime for a speed boost, and with three levels of boost depending on how much slime you have, you do have to consider when it’s smart to hang onto slime to build it up more because a level three burst of speed lasts longer and might be the way to cinch a win at certain parts. The computer-controlled racers in Nickelodeon Kart Racers are competent even on normal difficulty and on certain tracks they will show this as they know good spots to activate their own slime boosts, and with a few tracks even having split paths there is some value in track knowledge and planning when to activate your slime boosts. To make the boating segments more interesting though, since you’re racing on slime instead of water, you’re getting a constant feed of slime, meaning boosting is more commonly available but the looser control can mean it’s not always wise.

 

Slime boosting helps the game avert feeling so basic it would quickly become dull, but Nickelodeon Kart Racers throws in a few more ideas with varying success. While the tournament structure already works by granting you a certain amount of points based on your placement so losing one race won’t doom your tournament prospects, there are some special race types to spice things up a bit more. Some boating races are instead slalom races where you need to drive past the proper side of a buoy or you’ll get a penalty, and too many penalties will lead to an immediate removal from the race. AI racers do struggle with this more than other aspects of the game but also show that the game is willing to let the player get big leads if they’re able to handle the tracks better than the AI opponents. A bit less interesting though are the elimination races where after the first lap, every 20 seconds someone will be eliminated from the race. You still can finish these like a normal race by completing three laps though so it’s mostly just a threat to people doing poorly, but it does fare better than the multiplayer-only battle mode where you’re stuck in fairly plain and flat arenas trying to hit each other with items. Team races also exist where the points earned from the different placements of two characters are added up instead, but beyond a hammer item that requires both players to activate it to bonk every other racer at once, it hardly feels like your teammate is really anything more than another racer on the track.

 

Kart customization is also a feature here but one that isn’t too deep. Your vehicle has certain parts you can swap around, the player able to pick from different engines, wheels, boat skis, spoilers, and paint jobs. The influence of such parts is often small and you need to unlock more options, often by collecting the coins across tracks to buy better stuff. Usually parts have different advantages so they’re not always a matter of strict upgrades and you can earn some for free through the leveling system where playing more will eventually earn you the experience to attempt a Victory Lap. Victory Laps take the last track you were racing on and scatter goodies along it, players able to grab boxes that usually provide coin rewards but might rarely give you kart parts as well, ensuring the lap is at least always profitable while speeding along the unlock process a touch. The whole system feels a bit half-hearted though, the karts often more interesting for what they’re referencing like Tommy driving the Reptar Wagon or one of the paint jobs being based on the Jolly Olly Ice Cream Truck. Like many parts of the experience, if it had been embraced more the game would be more exciting, but the fundamentals and attention to details in certain elements do keep it from dragged down by its clear limits both on what it could draw from and what it could conceive to spice up the racing.

THE VERDICT: While the racer roster feels a bit lean, Nickelodeon Kart Racers tries to make up for it by giving its four featured franchise some love where it can like in the track designs and referential karts and items. The race tracks keep things entertaining enough especially thanks to the slime boost system adding some considerations beyond when to drift or which branching path to take, and the items do solid work with the character-specific tools an interesting disruption. Many ideas like battle mode, kart customization, or the elimination races come up short, but the standard racing that makes up most of Nickelodeon Kart Racers works well enough that it won’t be a bore to play even though it clearly doesn’t measure up to kart racers with more creative direction and higher budgets.

 

And so, I give Nickelodeon Kart Racers for PlayStation 4…

An OKAY rating. The slime boost system really might be the saving grace of this racing game as without it, the AI racers really might struggle to keep up with a competent drifter. Instead though, there is some strategy in making sure you hit the slime, save it for when it’s useful, but also make sure you consider when other racers might use their boost so they don’t pull ahead at an unexpected moment. The items are the more expected disruption and do well at their job, the game being a little indulgent in letting even a first place racer grab a potentially powerful signature item on the final lap but otherwise having a good sense on providing appropriately powerful items to racers based on placement without making people near the front feel like they’re getting trash that won’t impact the race. Nickelodeon Kart Racers’s shortcomings are most likely ones that came about from limited support from Nickelodeon, the lack of voices, the small roster, and even the size of the game as a whole holding it back, but when you spot a very specific reference in a track’s background or as a part for your car, it starts to show that there was some love for the few franchises that were handed to the development team. Some ideas like the gliders feel tacked on simply because Mario Kart did it as well, but the boating segments are a good gameplay shift because they play more into the boosting and the slalom idea is a nice way to alter a track’s difficulty without having to fundamentally retool it.

 

You will be fairly aware of Nickelodeon Kart Racers’s limits as you play it, but not because they adversely impact the racing very often. With the right backing from Nickelodeon this likely could have been an energetic experience that perhaps had the time to properly realize its alternate modes rather than staple them on as minor extras, but the racing works well and has a few effective ideas on how to add variety to the experience. It’s not too easy thanks to mostly solid AI, so while it might not become your kart racer of choice, it doesn’t hurt to dabble in this experience a bit if you are a fan of the few franchises represented here to see some fun sights during the decent driving challenge.