Slime Time.
Nickelodeon Kart Racers 3: Slime Speedway, like its second entry, feels developed in mind to address the criticisms of its past, rather than forming a confident identity for the series, one placed in an already crowded genre where each and every kart racer out there seems to be taking a page out of the Mario Kart playbook. While Nickelodeon Kart Racers 3 is undoubtedly a better and more feature-rich release than its predecessors, it still lacks that certain something to push it over the finish line.
With each new entry in the series, we’ve had the predictable addition of more drivers, more courses, and more customization. Kart Racers 3 continues this trend by giving us a cast of over 40 characters, 36 unique tracks that are a combination of both old and new, and a vast assortment of customizable vehicle parts for not only your kart but also for bikes, a new addition for the series that is more or less pulled from Mario Kart WII, which continues to be the key franchise that Kart Racers is keen on being inspired by.
Now, regardless of whether it’s Mario Kart, Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, or any of the Crash racing series, Kart Racers 3 fundamentally still needs to stand apart, giving us something that makes it worthy of our time and money. However, it rarely achieves this, especially if you already own any of the aforementioned games, especially that of Mario Kart 8, which is surprisingly still releasing more courses at a fairly steady rollout. While there is certainly an enjoyable game here, it honestly can feel like it’s just a better version of Kart Racers 2, which isn’t by itself a bad thing.
One of Kart Racers 3’s only unique offerings is its chief and crew mechanic. This is one element where the game does have its own idea, or at least, one that doesn’t have me immediately thinking of yet another kart franchise. As you collect slime coins or drive through areas covered in slime, you’ll charge up your slime gauge, which powers your chief skill. Chief’s are a selection of special characters such as Mr. Krabs, Asami, Gaz, Tenzin, and a few more. Chief’s have skills that aid you in racing, from hitting players with a pancake spatula to obscuring the vision of your opponents with a simple smoke bomb. While I would prefer that the drivers themselves had these unique abilities, to allow them to feel different from one another, this is a fairly alright compromise, but certainly a mechanic I would love to see further fleshed out in a potential sequel.
Crew members work in largely the same way, but activate when ready, with a variable cooldown depending on the character. You can take two crew members into a race with you, and since there are 90 to choose from, at least once you have unlocked them, you’ll have a wide assortment to pull from to create a build that works for you. While the skills they grant can make races more interesting, they often make them a bit too easy, especially against the game’s often unopposing AI where you are only ever really competing for first or second place. Crew Members have similar skills to that of your chief, such as having your boosts shoot you further ahead, or being lent a boomerang by Sokka once you have used your item. Finding the pair that works alongside your chief is part of the strategy, but honestly, I just picked from the characters I liked that I had unlocked.
While there is a huge assortment of drivers, chief’s, and crew members, as well as a ton of vehicle components, such as wheels, exhaust pipes, the paint job of your ride, and its chassis, your options are largely limited at the start. However, as you win races, such as the Slime Scramble, which is a series of four races per cup, you’ll unlock more Crew Members as well as the Slime Tokens needed to unlock everything available to you. While the appeal of doing all this in-game is strangely novel at this point in the industry, usually relying on paid short-cuts, the number of coins you earn for any particular task is rather slim, especially when you need to win several cups just to buy a single chassis or additional driver. That said, there is an achievement for buying everything in the shop; however, I see that as being the least-earned achievement of the entire game by a slime-covered mile.
With a bigger cast of drivers than Kart Racers 2, there is certainly a bit of familiar overlap with much of the same cast returning; however, the use of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles this time around is that of the original cartoon and not that of the previous Nickelodeon CG cartoon from several years ago. This change is likely due to the TMNT games from this year featuring that era of the turtles with Shredder’s Revenge and the Cowabunga Collection bringing them back into the spotlight. When looking at the featured cast, there is still the same reliance on Spongebob Squarepants, Ren and Stimpy, Hey Arnold!, Rugrats, and several characters from the Airbender series as well.
New additions to this entry are Garfield and Odie, Jimmy Neutron, April O’Neil, Jenny Wakeman, Cindy Vortex, Powdered Toast Man, and a few more. And, unlike previous entries, each character is now fully voiced, which was a criticism of both Nick All-Star Brawl and each of the previous Kart Racers. That said, Brawl did eventually add in voices, and it was likely arranged during that time to bring that same talent to Kart Racers 3, which seems to align with the OG voices chosen for the TMNT crew.
While It is great to hear these characters sporting their iconic voices, there is a disappointing limit on how many lines of dialogue they actually have. During my time with Kart Racers 3, I played about 7 or 8 characters throughout the various modes, and each character felt like they only had 5 or 6 lines, some of which are repeated constantly throughout a single race. I am truly appreciative of the effort it must have taken to get these actors in a booth to bring us their well-known voices, but I really wish they had at least twice the lines to prevent the massive overuse of hearing the same things over and over again. I also found some of the writing to not really sound like something the character would actually say, but that is likely due to the game not having any of the actual writers of those shows.
Adding to the voices and deeper cast, Kart Racers 3 also finally allows the pairing of characters with whatever kart you want for them. So if you want Rocko or Stimpy behind the wheel of the Turtle van, you can totally do that. I also like the quick selection of choosing your already customized vehicle and character with a few button taps instead of having to customize it each and every time. If you have a build, you can just tap a single button after choosing your character and select it right there.
Courses range from all over each franchise, from the Arbuckle Farm to the Fire Nation, and even across the rooftops of Manhattan, or within the technodrome itself. Kart Racers 3 brings more variety in how you navigate courses with the inclusion of water and slime paths that are either part of the courses themselves or act as a shortcut. Slime paths have obstacles that must be jumped as you use them, which ends in a splash of purple slime and a solid boost to keep you going. Water, while used a bit too sparingly in my opinion, is similar in that you can jump toward the oncoming waves and get a bit of air for your efforts, often leaping you up to reach a well-placed shortcut. Out of all the new additions, I really do like the water racing and wished more tracks were more water than land, given how well your kart or bike can handle it once transformed to tackle the rocky waves.
The handling of each kart or bike will depend on the parts you have equipped to it, but while you can drift to cause sparks to ignite and propel you further with a well-timed boost, I do wish there was a faster way to turn or back up. This aspect of mobility is largely noticed as some courses have wildly harsh turns or even invisible walls that can cause you to get stuck on them; however, I’ll admit that the latter is a very rare occurrence on only a small handful of courses. Otherwise, racing does feel solid and has a decent sense of speed, which is something I cannot say about the latest Paw Patrol racing game that felt like I was driving through molasses while weighted down with cement tires.
Much like any kart racer, you’ll have a series of items that you can use to combat other racers, and while there isn’t anything here that changes the game or results in any massive upsets, you do have a decent variety of items nonetheless that do feel borrowed from other titles. You’ll have the Toy ball that acts like the green shell, the football that acts like the blue shell, a shield to protect you from incoming items, to a lawn gnome that takes the place of the banana peel. Then you have the appearance of hans, which is the hand from SpongeBob Squarepants that obscures your vision, to using a Mouser to snatch an opponent’s item if they are nearby. There are 25 items to choose from, but there are some items that I rarely saw, such as the Hyper Mega Rust, which causes holes in the floor to appear. Then there is the suck-o-matic, which is an item I never saw even once.
Nick racers 3 has a small variety of modes to keep you busy with the aforementioned Slime Scramble which is your overall championship race, consisting of numerous cups that rotate through the entire allotment of maps. The final cup is locked until you race all the other cups, but I was disappointed that it simply consisted of maps that I had already raced. Then you have free races, time trials, challenges, and an arena. Challenges have you taking on a series of races that have an objective, such as performing 5 slime stunts or crossing through 10 boost rings while winning the race.
The arena is what you would expect from the name, a mode where racing is on the back burner and you combat the other racers with your arsenal of weapons. Demolition has you hitting opponents 10 times to secure victory, whereas Control the Golden Spatula is a game of tag, where if you hold onto the spatula for a period of time, you score a point. This mode could have been fun, but without on-screen markers to keep you aware of where the spatula is at all times, it makes for a rather poor mode. While you do have the mini-map to track said spatula, it simply makes it harder to gauge the direction due to its static placement.
Jellyspotters is a much better version of tag racing as one team will be the jellyfish and the others will be the jellyspotters, attempting to capture them in their net before time runs out. The final arena mode is Slime Trails and while fun, this is literally if Splatoon was a racing game and might be the best mode this game offers as you paint the track your team color before time runs out.
The whole of Kart Racers 3 can be played in split-screen multiplayer apart from the challenge mode, which is strictly single-player. Overall, the game ran fine in split-screen but your mileage will vary if you can find other players to even play this with you. While taking a look at this game in pre-release, I couldn’t find a single online match to test out the connection, but you can either enter into a private match or find other racers online in matchmaking with all the same modes and features that are found in its local split-screen multiplayer.
While Kart Racers 2 certainly had a visual bump from its debut entry, Kart Racers 3 only improves upon it in some smaller and less noticeable ways. The game still has a very noticeable budget look to it that is shared with Nick All-Star Brawl as well, likely a limitation of what GameMIll Entertainment has had to work with. I personally would love to see this team really cut loose with a bigger budget to really bring it as while they certainly have several elements of the gameplay down, the game’s presentation is honestly the only real hurdle that makes it hard to compete with the genre, especially with the new generation of hardware well into their current cycle.
Kart Racers 3 is certainly a better title than its previous entries, offering a large cast of characters and a ton of pretty impressive courses to rip around in. Its battle modes are not as impressive against the AI, but as is the case with most games, there is something to be said about racing with and against your friends. The deeper customization offered here with free use of any kart is a welcome change and while the voices can be far too repetitive due to a disappointing limit on voice lines, it would have been a bad look for another entry to see these characters silent once again. All that said, Kart Racers 3: Slime Speedway is decent for what it offers within its series, with some alright handling and a satisfying sense of speed. It’s by no means the best kart racer out there, but with the right audience, it can certainly be something you can still totally enjoy.
Developer - Bamtang Games. Publisher - GameMill Entertainment. Released - October 14th, 2022. Available On - Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One/Series X/S, Microsoft Windows. Rated - (E) Comic Mischief, Mild Cartoon Violence. Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X. Review Access - A review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.