POSTED 4/1/12


TNT RACERS

Keen Games
PS3/PSN (also on Xbox 360/XBLA, Wiiware)

You know that feeling when you first meet somebody and they’re the coolest thing since Sunnyboys, but then they quickly lose that shiny new lustre and just get on your tits?

Introducing TNT Racers... It absorbs bits of Mario Kart, Micro Machines and classic cartoon Wacky Races (or Cel Damage Overdrive in Videogameland), with a smattering of something we can’t quite put our finger on – you know, when you’re out of the race once you go offscreen... umm, C64, and when you crashed your little driver burst into flames and rolled about trying not to fry. Damn, it’s gonna bug us all night!

Anyway, you select a cartoony vehicle – the sort that have massive exhaust pipes covering the doors, so you wonder how the fizoink the driver gets in – and dive into numerous challenges splashed over 18 varying courses. Each race has an aim, from simply winning, to avoiding things, to ploughing through things or being the first to score bigly enough.
Aiding you is an astonishing arsenal of armoury gained drive-through-the-powerup style, ranging from ho-hum oil slicks and banan… erm, bombs, to mad giant hammers that fliddadit the whole track. Get left off screen and you’ll resurrect all ghostly, unable to win but still able to cause havoc.

It’s all accompanied by 1920s-styled music that we endure in Boardwalk Empire ’cos it suits, but makes us want do a double Van Gogh hack here. Oboe just ain’t good racing accompaniment! Our other grievance is that your racer’s plopped mid-screen, so you can scarcely see what’s coming up – meaning memorise or die.

There is salvation though. The up-to-four multiplayer mode can be an absolute cack, as you’re doing battle with smartarse humans, not smartarse AI.

Rally Speedway! Phew, and now we can all get some sleep...

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