In my time writing reviews for this site, I’ve been known to have a few unpopular opinions. Opinions that have been known to trigger a few individuals, who have reached out in the comments or by one of our various social channels to tell me exactly how wrong I am and where I can shove my thoughts. One thought that I have never vocalized here is one that may not sit well with some of you – I have a complete and utter hatred for Mario Kart 8. It’s not that it’s a bad game by any means; it just felt like an empty hollow shell of what the series was built upon. It was one of the first games I acquired with Nintendo’s most recent system, and as of this writing, the only game I have traded in after a unanimous vote in my household. This caused one issue within our family – it left us devoid of a really good kart racing game since everyone’s favorite plumber holds a slight monopoly on the genre. That is, until Nickelodeon Kart Racers 2: Grand Prix came racing in to save the day.
On the surface, this looks like a shameless reskin of the reigning champion of kart racers, replacing the popular Nintendo characters with some of the biggest names from Nicktoons history. It incorporates characters from Invader Zim, Ren & Stimpy, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Rugrats, SpongeBob SquarePants, among many others, some of which trigger my love for nostalgia, and others that worked as a jumping-off point to entice my son into picking up the second controller. The staggering roster of 30 racers touches on almost every major series from the 90s’ to the early 2000s’, with AHHHHH! Real Monsters being the sole exclusion (which saddened me a bit, since it was a personal favorite), and overflows into the track and vehicle designs as well as your pit team, which really is what pushes this game into overdrive.
Overall, the races play out in a familiar way; you’ll race to be the first to complete 3 laps, avoiding hazards and using special items or abilities to make sure your opponents stay behind you, where they belong. The biggest change is that you’ll need to collect slime, the bright green ooze that was a staple of the Nickelodeon franchises for as long as I can remember, that fills a meter allowing you to unleash a super-powered ability that either adds a buff to your driver or destroys the closest racer. You’ll find slime in coins, laid out across the track, spouting from broken pipes or geysers, and other various assets. This was something I struggled with since I was instinctively avoiding the hazards since that’s just what years of playing the competition has ingrained into my brain. If the super-powered abilities are not enough to get your engine revved up, you can still collect pick-ups regularly that allow you to use a small pool of offensive and defensive items, some of which will be selected based on pure luck, where others are pre-selected based on the characters in your pit crew. This can be a bit overwhelming, and downright time consuming if you’re playing with four local players, but the end result allows for one of the deepest arcade racers out there and is entirely worth it.
The tracks all take inspiration from Nick’s wide variety of shows that have graced the network’s history, even going as far as including a Double Dare themed track that has more slime than actual track depending on whom you ask. The game rarely deviates from the short and sweet laps clocking in around a minute each, likely to keep the younger players attentive through the checkered flag, which left me wanting bigger tracks to explore, with only a single shortcut being a thing in most cases. Between my son and I being walking encyclopedias of Nicktoons both classic and new, we had no trouble discerning which property each of the levels originated from despite all being taken from their original 2D formats and converted into uniform 3D environments.
As a single-player experience, the game offers a decent number of Grand Prix routes to complete and three difficulties to master. There’s also 40+ challenges that task you with completing specific objectives in a timed setting that offer unique unlocks such as additional characters, customization options for your kart, and new members of your pit crew. There are also the usual single race options that can be completed in time trials, single vanilla races, and arena battles. I really enjoyed my playthroughs of the Grand Prix courses on easy and normal with very minimal issues, but when attempting on hard, I reached a breaking point a few times due to how cheap the enemies begin to feel, as they would repeatedly hit me back to back to back to back to back…. you get the point, with the most annoying abilities the game has to offer, like one where everyone but the users motor gets turned into a pig. I am pretty convinced this is just this game’s way of cheating to ensure that you lose at every turn thus making it “hard” without any real change to how the other opponents perform.
The title really kicks into top gear when you add additional human players to the party, which supports four players locally or up to eight via online play. Connecting is quick and easy, but the obvious option to allow multiple racers to play online via the same console is sorely missing, so if you were hoping to get this and play your family against another competing family in a Family Feud style battle to the death (which was something I talked a friend into buying a copy of this game to do), you better have eight consoles and discs lying around. There are a few small modifiers in place for those who wish to change up the experience, but another massive miss is the complete omission of team play.
Despite the game capturing the look of the popular characters from my childhood, after a while it loses some of its luster as the game is completely devoid of any voice-overs from any of the characters I sampled without so much as an underpaid impersonator of one of the greats that brought these iconic characters to life. It was strange to see so much fan service thrown into one area, but completely forgetting to include any voice work or noteworthy music from any of the series represented. As someone who thinks outside of the box, I did take the opportunity to turn off the music entirely and make my family join me in a never-ending rendition of “Happy Happy, Joy Joy” as I sped past them as Ren.
Nickelodeon Kart Racers 2: Grand Prix isn’t going to win any game of the year awards or replace my favorite game, but it clearly has a different goal in mind – being fun. It offers a surprisingly solid kart racing experience. I spent the majority of this past weekend sitting down with my family as my wife and I relived our childhood memories and hopefully gave my son a few of his own, and will probably spend the next week reading angry comments about how I am an idiot because I don’t like Mario Kart 8. That’s fine, but at least go buy this game and give it a spin first.
7 out of 10
Pros
- Nostalgia for Days
- Huge Cast of Playable Characters
- Basic Concept That Is Accessible For Most Players
- The Pit Crew Concept Adds Depth for Kart Racer Vets
Cons
- No Representation from Ahhhh! Real Monsters
- AI on Hard Mode
- Limited to One Online Player
- Lack of Some Obvious Modes/Options
Nickelodeon Kart Racers 2: Grand Prix was developed by Bamtang Games and was published by GameMill Entertainment. The game is available on NS, PC, PS4, and X1. The game was provided to us for review on X1. If you’d like to see more of Nickelodeon Kart Racers 2: Grand Prix, check out the official site.
Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid paying for; 5-7 is something that is worth playing, but probably not at full price; 8-10 is a great title that you can feel confident about buying. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.
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