I imagine that somewhere out there, there’s a battle royale for game developers, each team fighting tooth and nail to acquire the best licenses on which to base a game. Amongst the sand and the blood, you’d have to imagine that Dreamworks Animation would be one of the most prestigious licenses out there, teams climbing on top of their fallen compatriots to reach it. But, as you stand there clasping your prize you realise that there’s too many options. What exactly do you do with the Dreamworks license? Seemingly, the answer is to make a kart game.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with making a kart game, and at its heart, there’s nothing wrong with Dreamworks All-Star Kart Racing. Once you’ve got over the variable quality of the soundalike voice artists, you’ll find a game that’s packed with largely recognisable animated stars like Hiccup from How to Train Your Dragon, Mr Wolf from the recent Bad Guys, and that loveable green ogre, Shrek. They look, and sound, close enough that any undiscerning child will likely not notice, and it feels like that’s the market right there.
There’s initially a good batch of racers to choose from, and you unlock more by completing the different cups on offer. They’re all from Dreamworks’ biggest franchises though, so anyone hoping for a Prince of Egypt or El Dorado cameo will be left sorely disappointed. That said, one of the highlights of the game has to be arriving at each of the themed tracks and seeing places like Berk, Shrek’s swamp or Far Far Away appear in all their glory. They not only look good, they’re fun to race around too.
The racing has borrowed liberally from Mario Kart, from the speed boosts and tricks when you launch off a ramp to holding the jump button to drift around a corner, with a speed boost at the end when done properly. On top of that, there’s a bevy of Dreamwork’s-themed weaponry – Donkey is seemingly making waffles to cause automotive mayhem here – and collectibles that increase your speed littering the track.
Those collectibles are musical notes, and with them, you attract the attention of The Trolls. Whether it’s Poppy or Branch you’ll find your kart festooned with brightly coloured locks, and my seven-year-old repeatedly cried out the names of each of them as they appeared. It’s a fun little touch.
Sadly, the Trolls would likely be reaching for their ear defenders when they heard the game’s on-track audio. When you launch the game you’ll find the audio mix is all over the shop, and that each of the character’s voices is incredibly loud in the mix. This could be alright if they actually stopped talking, yelping or shouting at the top of their lungs for even one moment. Seriously, I don’t know how they manage to drive a kart when they’re so busy chatting.
You can thankfully head into the menus and turn it down, at which point you’ll likely wonder why the music is at a lower volume. The answer is that none of the music seems to be licensed, and its ‘inspired’ tones sound as though they’ve been written on a 1990s’ synthesiser. A cheap one at that. It’s better than the constant shouting at least.
So Dreamworks Kart Racer is a relatively smart-looking, but fairly-awful sounding racer. The racing itself is at least enjoyable enough for what it is, though tellingly my 7-year-old had much less success with it than in Mario Kart. This slightly increased difficulty is worth bearing in my mind as he soon started to get over the novelty of drifting Puss in Boots around the track, and I’ll be surprised if he chose to return to it over the plumber’s iconic Switch entry.
