There’s no stopping kart racing video games for kids. Barely two weeks have gone by since the release of PAW Patrol: Grand Prix, and yet here we are with another one. There’s nothing inherently wrong with competition, quite the opposite in fact. But at some point, you have to wonder when quality becomes quantity for the sake of just being on the bandwagon.
Nickelodeon Kart Racers 3: Slime Speedway was made by Bamtang Games and published by GameMill Entertainment. The developer, Bamtang Games, also made titles like Nickelodeon Kart Racers, Nickelodeon Kart Racers 2: Grand Prix, or Saban’s Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Mega Battle. These didn’t do so great review-wise, but at the end of the day, they’re basically made for children not older than 10 or 12.
Now, their latest kart racing game features beloved characters from Nickelodeon cartoon shows like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick, Korra, the Rugrats, Garfield, Jimmy Neutron, Ren & Stimpy, and many, many more.
As a side note, I have to say that I'm amazed Ren and Stimpy are still a thing. I remember being absolutely disgusted by the gory artistic design choice of the animated series. Of course, I watched it nonetheless, but still, it was pretty unsettling to a seven-year-old me.
Now returning to our show, the game seems alright, judging from the trailer alone. I can imagine, as a kid, how amazing it can be to play with characters from your favorite cartoons. And this effect is highly emphasized by the friendly low-poly style of graphics, and even more so by the original voices of the characters themselves.
Aside from a single-player and two-player mode, the game features a four-player local co-op mode, where you can play split-screen if you have the required number of controllers. As for the online component, the player gets to compete against 11 other players.
The trailer also boasts a total of 55,000,000,000,000 customizable combinations, and no, that’s no typo on my part. In these cases, I always recommend not spending a single dime on in-game cosmetic items.
Also, if you’re a parent, it would be wise not to have your credit or debit cards saved anywhere in the game, console, pc, and so on. And remember, there are always “parental controls” somewhere in the Options menu.
The objective of the game is pretty straightforward. As a player, you have to race against other characters around the tracks and try to collect power-ups to mess with the others, while aiming to get to the 1st position on the leaderboard.
The game is available now on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC through Steam, and it’s $50. After going through a couple of reviews online, I saw that the scales are either really positive or negative.
You might want to siphon through a lot of them before pulling the trigger on this one. That’s if you are planning on playing it yourself, or if your kid is a competent video game reviewer at the age of five.
Codrin just loves American classics, from the 1940s and ‘50s, all the way to the muscle cars of the '60s and '70s. In his perfect world, we'll still see Hudsons and Road Runners roaming the streets for years to come (even in EV form, if that's what it takes to keep the aesthetic alive). Full profile
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