If you’re an XboxEra aficionado, you probably know me by now: if a game features vehicles to race, I’m there to review it. 2-wheels, 4-wheels and beyond, arcade or sim-esque. Today we’ll look into a Mario Kart-esque arcade party racer, uninspiringly named Turbo Dash Kart 2024 Racing. Is the game more than the name would imply, though?
I’ll budget that in
At this point, who doesn’t know the Mario Kart formula? Short races on bizarrely shaped tracks with obstacles, moving parts, with players needing to maximizing their drifting and nitro-managing skills, alongside funky power-ups that could turn the race on its head in an instant. There’s been way too many clones to count at this point, with publishers and IP owners like SEGA, Dreamworks, Activision and more taking their shots at Nintendo, attempting to bring that evergreen formula into new territories, even away from Nintendo consoles where Mario Kart’s natural habitat has always been.
To be fair, Turbo Dash Kart 2024 Racing is inspired by that formula, but clearly doesn’t have the budget or the intention to compete with the biggest releases. At a budget launch price of just about 10 bucks, it would be unfair to expect the amount of polish, content and technical excellent of its peers, and indeed the low-budget nature of the title immediately transpires. Basic menus and UI that almost look like placeholders, music and sounds that all feel like stock with their volume levels and mixing that seems all over the place, with even the graphics seeming a bit of a mish-mash of different styles, with cartoony elements mixed with more realistic models. But none of that is a huge issue if the game is fun, right?
Most of the elements are sorta there
Indeed, the handling and general core gameplay is certainly better than the uninteresting audiovisual combination would imply. The handling feels responsive and precise, with drifts that are quite easy to initiate and hold, even though they don’t roll quite as smooth as in most kart racers. The general speed of karts feel a bit low at first, but as the player progresses and earns coins, better machinery can be bought, with every vehicle featuring all sorts of performance upgrades to boosts its handling, top speed and so forth. It’s not a particularly great driving model, but it’s serviceable enough, and with karts increasing in speed as the player progresses, the level of adrenaline does rise a little bit.
Much like the handling, the management of power-ups is sufficient, rather than notable. Expect the usual barrage of defensive shields, homing rockets, traps to place behind us and so on, with very little creativity in their functionality and also no specific leader-centric weapon (the equivalent of Mario Kart’s blue shell, basically). Similar situation for the tracks themselves – many of them are quite basic ovals, or very uninspired symmetric shapes with very little in terms of height changes, ramps and no real moving parts of shortcuts to use. Once again, it’s about as basic as it gets, and while some areas look moderately nice, I can’t think of a single track that I feel to be a standout. And since game modes even include elimination races with 6 racers, some longer tracks can be quite repetitive to be driven through 5 consecutive times, as the gameplay variety is rather low.
Why would you play this kart racer in particular?
The campaign is pretty lengthy at least, with dozens and dozens of events to burn through against increasingly skilled racers, as the player gets to complete challenges, unlock new karts, power them up, buy new skins for them and so on. That’s about it, though: with no local or online multiplayer, Turbo Dash Kart 2024 Racing’s already rather uninspired racing only ever materializes against the AI, taking away a huge element of what makes a wacky arcade kart racer so great. That being, the party game aspect, the competition against friends and foes, the last second heartbreaks that don’t quite hit as hard when playing against basic AI opponents.
Ultimately, Turbo Dash Kart 2024 Racing is somewhat serviceable in terms of driving experience and not exactly broken in any significant way. But at the same time, the game design is as basic and generic as it gets, with nothing that really stands out, no part of the game that feels particularly finetuned, and no true reason to play this specific game over the dozens of far superior Mario Kart clones available on Xbox alone. The lack of any form of multiplayer pretty much seals the deal. Hardcore fans of kart racers may spend a passable couple hours here, but I wouldn’t recommend this game to others.
Turbo Dash Kart 2024 Racing
Played on
Xbox Series X
PROS
- Has some pretty decent effects at times
- Plenty of content for a low price
CONS
- Basic, unimpressive driving model
- Extremely repetitive
- No local or online multiplayer, only AI races
- Uninspired track and visual design
