Nintendo’s Mario Kart is probably one of the best kart racing game in the whole gaming universe. It’s actually one of the reasons people buy a Nintendo console. The game has everything to make such a kart racing game unique and fun to play, solo or with others. It offers a great variety of characters (each with their own personalized vehicle), creatively designed tracks and an interesting amount of game modes. Mario Kart just feels like the whole package and that may be the reason why no other developer tries to compete within this genre. It’s difficult to create a game that feels like a Mario Kart but not too much or it’ll become a major rip-off… and the game offers more unique features to keep the players interested. Maybe this time around, Mario Kart will get dethroned and finish second…

All-star fruit racing is a kart racing game that follows Mario Kart very closely and strips the game of its best parts and tries to implement them into its own franchise. It looks like a very kid-friendly game due to its colourful racing tracks and happy atmosphere. The racing game has around 20 characters and they’re all inspired by different fruits. If you’re having trouble with learning your kid to eat fruit and you’re looking for other ways that are probably more successful than your own parenting skills, this game might be the tool for you to get some Vitamins into your kid’s body.

All-Star Fruit Racing is just like almost any other racing kart game. At the beginning of your career, you choose your driver with its own super move and you start racing different tournaments. These tournaments are taking place all over this fantasy world with beautiful well-designed tracks with their own shortcuts. The colorful racing tracks feel alive and memorable. They all have their own amazing atmosphere. To keep your advantage during the race, you can collect different fruits that’ll turn into devastating moves to get you that first place. You can juice 4 different fruits and even combine your juices to have an even more powerful move. If all those moves don’t suffice, you can always collect all of the four fruits that’ll unlock your super move. However, even though you can aim for your super move, the super move does feel less special than the game wants you to believe. The game even stimulates you to juice as much as you can during the race because you need those moves to get ahead from your opponents.

The game offers you a couple of racing possibilities like for example; career is all about getting first place in eleven cups within the 5 worlds (which are all inspired by fruits) and you’ll be able to juice different fruits. Then there’s the Championship where you’ll race on different tracks with different modes. The game offers a couple of modes: Time Attack ( after different countdowns, the player that’s placing last when the countdown ends will be knocked out), Random Juicer ( the fruits are replaced by random moves), Juicer ( juice the fruits you want and unleash their power), Dragster ( a mode where supers/ moves recharge super-fast) and Elimination ( Eliminate opponents as much you can, to save yourself a spot in the next lap). The game offers a lot of modes but they’re pretty straightforward. There’s also the option to play the game with other players, online and offline.

The game also offers a garage where you can customise your karts. This customisation option is okay, even though it doesn’t offer that many options. You can equip your karts with horns, antennas and pimp your tires. Other options aren’t available and a lot of these customisation parts don’t feel unique enough to stand out.

“It manages to create its own personal touch on the karting genre which is a great plus”

All-Star Fruit Racing is nothing new when it comes to the racing kart genre and even if it gets most of its ideas from other popular racing kart games such as Mario Kart or even Sonic Racing, it manages to create its own personal touch on the karting genre which is a great plus. However, while a lot of the game’s features have been well developed, I can’t help but feel that the game needs to tweak some of its stuff in order for it to become a great karting game.

For example, all racers feel the same, even if they have a unique look with their unique super move, they start off with the same stats like any other racer and they stay like this throughout the whole game. It’s not like the characters have different attributes to come out on top in different situations.  Another thing is the game’s driving mechanic, the driving of the kart is okay but there’s no sense of acceleration while playing. It seems like you’re reaching your maximum speed limit very quickly and the only way to boost the speed is by drifting or acceleration pads. And while this seems good on paper, these “speed boosts” don’t make a big difference as you feel like your opponents are constantly only one step behind you. It seems like they’re not too far away and this means that one tiny mistake can ruin your whole race. The loading times are also long but I loved the information that they’re giving on fruit. I’ve actually learned a couple of things about fruit.

Conclusion

All-Star Fruit Racing is an okay racing kart game to fill a couple of hours, but you’ll be bored very quickly. I often think that these kinds of games are just meant to be played with others because of the social fun factor. This karting game offers a lot and yet not too much to keep someone’s interest for long. If I had the choice, I would still choose Mario Kart over this one but as you might have noticed, there aren’t too many karts game on other consoles to choose from. So if you’re looking for a great way to spend some time with your friends, this deserves a place in your collection but as a single player game, I would hold my money for something else that might come around. If you have some money to spend, there are plenty of other racing games that offer a lot more than All-Star Fruit Racing.

7/10

Tested on Playstation 4