Gigantosaurus: Dino Kart – Review

A couple of years have passed since Gigantosaurus first graced consoles, but the kid-friendly dinosaur franchise is back, in kart racer form. While we have a soft spot for dinosaurs, our preferred depictions of these magnificent creatures are closer to their Jurassic Park incarnations instead of the cutesy critters that populate the Gigantosaurus universe. As such, the Disney Junior tv series has largely flown under our radar, but we do love a good kart racer, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity to familiarise ourselves with the likes of Rocky the Parasaurolophus, Tiny the Triceratops and their friends. Is Gigantosaurus: Dino Kart a roaring success or a waste of fossil fuel?

Story

Given that Dino Kart is a simple kart racer based on a cartoon aimed at toddlers, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that there isn’t a whole lot of depth to the game’s story. The premise is that Mazu, one of the many dinosaurs that inhabit this franchise, has invented cars. Naturally, the next step is to engage in death-defying races across the Pangaean continent. Admittedly, we’re not up to date with the source material, so we can’t vouch for Dino Kart’s lore accuracy within the greater Gigantosaurus universe, but we’re pretty sure that dinosaurs didn’t invent the wheel, so if you’re a stickler for historical accuracy, then this might not be your game.

Graphics

The Gigantosaurus cartoon series is CGI animated and as such, its visuals translate well into video games. The cute and vibrant character designs are accurate representations of what kids see in the show. The various environments that surround the race tracks look great as well, with plenty of variation. Granted, Dino Kart’s visuals aren’t groundbreaking by any means, and it’s even easy to scrutinize the screenshots as things tend to look fuzzy and undetailed, but a lot of the visual shortcomings are masked by the fast-paced gameplay. The frame rate is surprisingly stable and consistent as well.

Sound

If there is one aspect where Dino Kart simply misses the mark, then it is with its soundtrack. We’re not familiar with the show, so we don’t know if the tunes that play during races were lifted from the source material, but the tunes are bland and unexciting, and simply don’t fit with the atmosphere of a racing game. On the upside, Dino Kart’s dialogue is fully voice-acted, even if there isn’t a whole lot of it. The sound effects are great, but not exceptional, and we wouldn’t be surprised if the majority of these were recycled from previous kart racers published by Outright Games.

Gameplay

Over the past few months, we’ve seen different publishers tackle several popular kids’ licenses and turn them into kart racing games, from Paw Patrol to Nickelodeon and the Smurfs. Gigantosaurus is the latest franchise to join this lineup, and if you were to look under Dino Kart’s hood, it’s more than likely you’ll find something that looks very similar to the aforementioned kart racers, just with a different coat of paint applied. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because although the kart racers developed by 3DClouds in particular aren’t up there with Mario Kart, they’re still fairly decent games. Of course, the majority of what makes these games appealing to the target audience is the license itself rather than the actual gameplay. These games are designed with a younger audience in mind as the older crowd has no real reason to pick Dino Kart over something like CTR or Mario Kart itself.

Dino Kart offers three main modes. The most straightforward one is the ‘race’ option, which lets you pick a track and difficulty, after which you take on a single track. The ‘adventure’ mode lets players take part in a tournament of sorts, offering up a series of tracks centered around a specific theme, either Savannah, Jungle, or Mount Oblivion. Finally, ‘play with friends’ is Dino Kart’s multiplayer mode, where up to four friends can take on one another in split-screen mode. Dino Kart offers no online option but given the target audience, we don’t think this would have been a necessary inclusion anyway. As you progress through the adventure mode, new characters and tracks are unlocked, as well as alternate color schemes for the racers. Nothing in Dino Kart is exceedingly difficult to unlock but this approach does provide the game with a sense of progress, which is preferable to having everything unlocked from the beginning.

As for the actual races, these are fine but not particularly challenging, even at the highest difficulty. As far as we could tell, the main difference between the easy, normal, and hard difficulties is how much rubberbanding there is going on with the NPCs. Controlling the karts doesn’t feel as satisfying as it should be. Although the game has a drift option, it doesn’t feel very responsive, even though drifting is the most important tool at your disposal for boosting your own speed. The karts themselves also feel a bit too light, and whenever you bump into something, whether it’s terrain, another racer, or one of the massive dinosaurs roaming the tracks, the collision isn’t as impactful as it should be. We’re also not sure whether the dino racers have variable stats, as there is no indication of this on the selection screen, or if the only differences between characters are purely cosmetic. Given that this is a kart racer, there are item boxes present as well. The items that you collect from these include a roar attack that blows other racers aside, berries and rocks that you can launch, and a shield that protects you from incoming obstacles. In practice, these items don’t really seem to have a lot of impact on the outcome of a race. Their effects are limited and it’s easy to recover after being hit by one.

The track layouts are decent enough, with most of them offering secret shortcuts and alternate pathways. One thing that did irk us was that a lot of the decorative elements look like stage hazards when they actually aren’t. Take the massive flesh-eating plant, pictured in the screenshot below, for example. Having spent quite some time playing Mario Kart, our natural reflex was to steer clear from it, as we’d half expected it to attack us like a Piranha Plant would. In practice, however, these plants ignored the racers, which was underwhelming. The main stage hazards that you’ll encounter are geysers that randomly spout water from underneath the track, and enormous dinosaurs, including the titular Gigantosaurus himself, that wander around the tracks and can accidentally step on racers.

Overall, Dino Kart feels like it plays things a bit too safe in terms of gameplay. Given the nature of the game as a licensed kart racer, that isn’t a surprise. This is a game that doesn’t need to innovate or be particularly memorable to be profitable after all, and we’re sure that we’ll be seeing more titles like this for other licenses, like the upcoming Batwheels cartoon, over the coming months. In all honesty, we’re not even going to complain about that, because despite these kart racers being bland and interchangeable with one another, they’re at least functional and decently put together. While we wouldn’t actually recommend Dino Kart to anyone over the age of eight, if you happen to be a parent or sibling of a kid that is a fan of the show, you could do far worse than gifting them this game.

Conclusion

Unless you’re a diehard fan of the Gigantosaurus series, Dino Kart isn’t going to blow you away. It’s a decent and serviceable kart racer that delivers exactly what you’d expect. The €39.99/$39.99 price tag feels steep but at least enough effort was put in to make the game feel like an actual product rather than a cynical cash grab. If you’re in the market for a kart racer, we’d still recommend one of the big hitters instead, but just like Smurfs Kart or Paw Patrol Grand Prix, Gigantosaurus: Dino Kart is an acceptable second-tier option.

SebastiaanRaats

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