Nickelodeon Kart Racers 2: Grand Prix

Nickelodeon Kart Racers 2: Grand Prix has all the aspects you expect from a Mario Kart style game. There are 3 difficulties, 8 cups with 4 races each (but there's only 28 tracks since the last cup reuses 4), and the weapons generally behave the same as the classic Mario Kart ones. There's a homing American football (red shell), toy ball (green shell), gnome (banana), then there's one that steals an item (ghost Boo), and a purple thing that goes after the leader (blue spiky shell), and others.

The graphics are bold, crisp and colourful, although many PC players complain about the lack of graphical options. Personally I thought it looked and played great.

There's a large and fantastic character line-up, from: Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, Ren & Stimpy, Rocco's Modern Life, Spongebob, Rugrats, Hey Arnold, CatDog, then some more modern ones that I have heard of like Avatar The Last Airbender, alongside unfamiliar ones to me like: Invader Zim, Danny Phantom and The Loud House.

The disappointment here is that there's no voice acting which is strange. Even if they couldn't get the original cast, surely they could just use some clips from the shows, or get an impressionist in to record some new lines. I appreciate voice acting can be pricey but is it that hard to get a few lines for victory, loss, successful attack, being hit etc.

An interesting mechanic is that you choose 3 supporting characters as pit crew. 2 are auto abilities, and 1 gives you a special ability that you can trigger when your slime gauge is full. You can see how some of these can work well together, so I'd imagine the community would have come up with "overpowered" combinations.

I always like unlocking things in games, so it was nice to see new racing characters, supporting cast, and car customisations were unlocked at different points. Some you need to complete the Challenge mode, some are gained by beating set times in Time Trial, then others are in Grand prix. Some car upgrades are purchased in the shop but that's a limited idea.

The racing is what you expect, and you are encouraged to drift to gain a boost, or leap off ramps to get a boost after a "stunt" animation.

You drive through slime (or collect slime coins) to fill your special gauge. Collecting slime coins also gives you a slight speed boost just like Mario Kart.

The weapon use is quite high, so there's probably a bit more luck required, or skill in blocking such attacks compared to some games. I suppose it makes some of the defensive support characters more beneficial too.

There's multiplayer options including battle mode, although now it is an old game - you are relying on local co-op here.

At first, I thought the courses seemed a bit generic as most weren't noticeably representative of the shows. But I suppose I haven't watched cartoons for 20 years, so maybe I had less chance of spotting references. I thought many moving obstacles across the courses look and move generically - so you dodge a car on one track, a mechanical Reptar in another, a coin, a cake, a fidget spinner. Maybe there could be a bit more imagination in the behaviour of the hazards. The courses do look and play well, I just feel like some of them just needed that extra personality to be obviously Nickelodeon when you glance at a screenshot.

I haven't played the original game, but it sounds like they really stepped it up for this iteration. It's a great karting game, but I feel like they could go even further to perfect this. Nickelodeon has such a good range of characters and content, their games could easily be up there if they really backed them.