Beach Buggy Racing is ideal to pick up and play whether you got 10 minutes or 2 hours of spare time. But is it good enough to compete with other console games within the genre?
What is it?
Beach Buggy Racing is a witty racing game where you blast your way through relatively short racetracks while picking up 25 unique powerups to ensure your first place at the end of the race.
These powerups can vary from nitrous to firing Chinese dragon fireworks at your opponents. Those opponents, or you if you are unlucky, will crash with the use of hilarious ragdoll physics.
The game lets you choose between distinctive characters that have their own special power you can use only once every race. This offers some unique battle strategies during the race. Will you make your enemies in front of you boogie-dance so you can overtake? Or are you sure to be in pole position and will you leave behind a trail of Hawaiian flowers to slow down those behind you? Choose you character wisely to fit your racing style. Some of the game’s tracks are quite short in the first couple of races but get relatively longer later on. Since Beach Buggy Racing was made for mobile gaming in mind, I guess it’s normal to get short tracks you can pick up and play through in less than one minute. Maybe the addition of a 3rd lap on home consoles would have been nice.
Every race gives you a maximum of 3 star rating, with those stars you can advance to harder levels. In addition to the stars you are appointed coins that allow you to tweak your kart to obtain a higher CC class. But don’t worry your kart will be downgraded temporarily if you go back to a let’s say 50cc only level. What is worth noting is the fact that there is no need at all to spend real money in this game, that’s a plus if we look at recent trends!
So let’s talk about the style and design of the game. First of all when I saw the game it “looked” like a mobile game… The graphics aren’t that bad but it’s that overall style used in 3D graphics for mobile phones and tablets. It’s like I’ve seen it before. Nonetheless the levels look fine and character/kart animations don’t look too bad even when played on a bigger screen.
For the level design it’s hard for me not to compare it to the MarioKart franchise. An underwater tube, a jungle filled with dinosaurs, a mountain covered with snow, a sunny beach with crabs and a giant arch made of rocks… Luckily there are some very original levels that offer challenging turns and shortcuts. And one of the newer tracks is called Fire and Ice… is there someone at Vector Unit secretly honouring Game of Thrones?
So it’s basically MarioKart?
While I’m sure the game took a large amount of inspiration from this classic series it isn’t a clone or cheap knockoff. The game takes what’s good from others like MarioKart, LBP Racing, Angry Birds GO! and I even get some “feel” from Crash Bandicoot Racing! The game has some unique modes like “elimination” where a 5 second timer goes off and eliminates the last racer in line until there is but 1 left to rise as the victor. A fresh twist in a genre as old as gaming itself.
What did I miss?
Although the game features a local 4 player splitscreen and some regularly updated challenges I feel like a real online multiplayer mode would give this game a major sales boost. Now surely this is expensive given the servers but maybe the next instalment could benefit from an online race mode?! Another thing I missed is a button allowing me to look behind me during the race. I would love to see my nemesis crash into my chickenbox!! That is something I missed a lot. No use of the second analogue stick either for 3D camera movement. That’s something you notice quite fast when playing this on a console.
| The Good | The Bad |
| + Easy controls | – No online multiplayer |
| + lots of funny powerups and ragdoll physics | – no buttons to look around or behind you while you drive |
| + unique gamemodes and replayability |
Overall a good game that doesn’t feel like it’s trying to be some other game in its genre. Great fun with friends through local co-op. Pick up and play for a couple of minutes or find yourself burning rubber through the hours. Great value and replayability, funny in its own way and a good potential alternative to the other franchises that have been ruling the iron throne of cartoony kart racing for too long.
