Developer: Bamtang Games
Publisher: GameMill Entertainment
Platform: PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
Tested on: PS5
Nickelodeon Kart Racers 3: Slime Speedway – Review
We’re starting to see a pattern when it comes to the release of the Nickelodeon Kart Racers games, as they seem to release every two years. The series started in 2018 and spawned a sequel in 2020, to now having its third game fully released. We saw quite a few improvements in the second game compared to the first game, which was simply a bad game. The second title gave us some hope that this series would become a great alternative to Mario Kart, with a few original gimmicks thrown in the mix. Nickelodeon Kart Racers 3 offered us more of the same, which is a shame. The game is still quite enjoyable, but it could have been a lot better with an extra layer of polish.
Story
Nickelodeon Kart Racers 3: Slime Speedway does not contain any story at all. The game is all about racing with different Nickelodeon-licensed characters. Even though it would have perhaps been fun to have a notion of a story present in the game, it’s not really missed either.
Graphics
Graphically, the game looks rough around the edges. What you’re getting here is basically a colorful Switch game, albeit on your next-gen console. The character designs are okayish at best and could have used a bit more polish. The vehicles look decent, and there’s a reasonable variety of vehicles to choose from. You can then also adjust the vehicle colors and/or decals if you wish to do so. The tracks themselves look quite nice, but the game does shy away from making a few interesting design choices. Due to this, you’ll only see a few obstacles here and there, but not much else will be going on when aiming for that coveted first place.
Sound
The background music is fairly decent and we did quite enjoy the overall soundtrack. The sound effects were also adequate for the onscreen action, but it was mainly the voice lines that became increasingly grating as we played more and more. Your chosen character will keep spouting the same handful of oneliners over and over. Most of the time we weren’t even performing a special action, and our character would still keep going on. This eventually got very tiresome, to the point that we simply muted the game or just started playing our own music in the background.
Gameplay
Nickelodeon Kart Racers 3: Slime Speedway is a kart racer, very much in the same vein as the Mario Kart series. The game will have you play through short tracks with your character and vehicle of choice, and you can also select your preferred crew members. These crew members will provide you with other special abilities that either trigger automatically or have you press a button to activate your main ability. Vehicle customization options are also available, as you can choose different bodies, exhaust pipes, and tires. The game is pretty straightforward, and it’s basically what you’d expect from a Mario Kart clone.
The game’s controls are quite decent, and the different vehicles do feel different in terms of handling. During the races, you’ll also be able to pick up power-ups and unleash them on your opponents or boost yourself. As Nickelodeon does have a slime fetish, collecting slime and slime tokens will fill up the gauge for your chosen ability, and when it’s full, you’ll be able to use it. This is all fairly standard stuff, but the overall mechanics and system are fairly good.
Sadly, things feel a bit too basic at times, and the game does have a few odd design choices. You’ll start with only two vehicles in each category (cars and bikes) and unlocking new content (including characters) goes extremely slow. If you play on the easy setting as a new player, you’ll often only get around eight coins per race, and most characters already require around 150 coins to unlock them. This is also the same for the vehicles and their customization options.
Another odd design choice is also noticeable when playing the game with friends or family. You can be having a fun time, but when the first player finishes a race, it just completely stops for every player involved. This might be one of the silliest things we have encountered in a game in a long time. We don’t see why a player, who is not in the lead, may not continue his race to perhaps get better at the game or just finish at a higher spot than he was at the time the race abruptly ends.
Conclusion
Nickelodeon Kart Racers 3: Slime Speedway is a fun Mario Kart clone, but it does feel lazy at times. The game has a fun cast of characters, but things are a bit basic and you’ll have to do a lot of grinding to unlock all of the game’s content. We do appreciate that there is a goal to work towards with the locked content, but we would have loved a bit more polish and the ability to actually finish races when you’re playing with friends. Other than that, if you liked the second game in the series, you’ll be offered more of the same here.
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