Baby kart. Review

Baby kart.

The good old days might look better on paper than reality (have you tried playing

Pong lately?), but some game genres have never really gotten better than

their first incarnations. For example, boxing games have never attained the glory

that was Super Punch Out and kart racing never really transcended Super

Mario Kart for the SNES, although the N64 version was pretty darn close.

Atari’s Furious Karting is a great example of a kart racer that stays

well within the boundaries of the classics. An admirable attempt at a story,

attractive graphics and an easy-to-learn (if somewhat pointless) control scheme

make it hard to dislike this game. However, uninspired tracks, 8 identical racers,

lame power-ups and a poorly conceived trick system make it hard to like

this game. The result is an all-around apathetic time trial.

Furious

Karting involves a rivalry between two dorky Kart gangs: The TNT Clan and

the Yellow Shark Clan. According to the instruction booklet they’re different;

one’s classy hip and the other is fun hip, but there doesn’t appear to be any

actual enmity between the two teams. No serious conflict, no fisticuffs, no

bloodletting – which makes sense, since this is a kart racer, and kart racers

are supposed to be light-hearted and insipid. But perhaps it’s this kind of

thinking that has prevented kart racers from becoming anything other than Mario

Kart for years.

To the game’s credit, the story is endearing and affects the nature of the races. For example, if you play as Inga and start winning, Patty’s beau will make overtures to you (sadly, the sexual innuendo functions on a fourth-grade, Southern Baptist school level). Beat her in a one-on-one race, and the man of Patty’s dreams is yours. Oh, and Patty will now hate you forever.

And so anger and aggression rear their ugly heads yet again. If you gank a

rival’s boyfriend, watch out during the next race; they’ll attempt to wreck

your pretty face with the business end of their baseball bat. Fortunately, you

have a bat too, as does every racer in the game, begging the question: why

bats? Giving each racer a personal weapon would have been a nice way

to separate them from one another. Instead, they’re all

If you attempt to slow down a racer by whacking them with a bat or any one

of five offensive power-ups, they’ll hate you until they have a chance to get

you back…or until you wave at them enough. Yes, by waving at a racer you can

right wrongs done by your baseball bat slamming them in the head. Chuck a grenade

at somebody and a friendly wave will make them forget all about the violence

and exploding and pain. Retarded. If you’re going to make a Barney-meets-the-Teletubbies

type game, leave out the hand-grenades – you’ll just confuse the kids.

Actually, grenades are pretty big in Furious Karting. You’ll find a

normal grenade, a smoke grenade that acts like a land mine, a chicken that also

acts as a land mine, a rear fire-shooting thing (I call it a Kart Fart) and

an oil slick that acts exactly like the Kart Fart. There are essentially three

offensively oriented power-ups. Lame. Then you have two different turbo-boosts

and a jump. Not exactly par for the karting course.

The

racing itself is very straightforward and easy to pick up. You accelerate, you

break, you turn. This is all that’s required of you to win races. The game gets

faster as you move up brackets and the tracks get more complex (albeit no less

poorly conceived).

After racing gets old, you can bust some tricks, which involves flying off

a ramp and pressing different directions on the right analog stick. That’s about

it. Yay. In most levels you can take a detour and wind up in an area with a

ramp where you can do one of these stupid tricks. However, this effectively

takes you out of the race. These detours are never shortcuts, and even though

you bust a flip, you wind up in last place. The courses themselves look good,

but aren’t very interesting otherwise.

Other than the main story/campaign mode, there’s a standard multiplayer mode

and a Jam Battle mode, where you search for a CD hidden on the course. Once

you find it, you drive around with it for as long as you can. Big thrills here.

The graphics are the best part of Furious Karting. Though the animation

during the cut-scenes is awful, the in-game appearance is really not bad. The

colors are bright, the pedestrians look pretty good and the lighting effects

are ambient and impressive.

Furious Karting sounds just like an idiotic kart racer should. The

music is upbeat and dopey, the voice acting is goofy and fine and the sound

effects are surprisingly specific, with different sounds accompanying different

driving surfaces.

Optimistically, this game is easy and friendly; cynically, this game is dumb

and tedious. Furious Karting is obviously targeted at boys attending

elementary school. If you are one, you’ll like this game. If you are not, well,

guess.

Furious Karting will make the wee rascals smile. The easy playability,

decent graphics and dumb violence are perfect for the young, inexperienced and

generally immature gamer. However, the lack of multiple paths, weapon variety

and useful shortcuts keep it from satisfying basic kart racing requirements.

Having experienced far better kart games as a pre-teen myself, I can’t recommend

this game to kids except as a rental.