TNT Racers

Posted 2 years ago By - Marko Djordjevic

The Kart racing genre hasn’t been that much of a focal point for quite some time. These types of games were once all the rage during the 90s, but now the release schedule is fairly void of the genre. The latest title that hopes to rekindle interest is TNT Racers, a quirky RC-Car game that offers plenty of different modes, but still ends up missing a few key pieces in order to make it a really enjoyable experience.

TNT Racers puts you in a number of different toy-looking cars as you burn rubber through various races types. Like many toy/kart racing games before it, not only is the objective to win, but to take out your opponents in the process with a number of different weapons found lying around every course.

In the single player portion, there are three modes available: challenges, time trials and custom race, all of which are pretty self explanatory. Most time spent will be playing through the three different challenge types: normal, fast and turbo. You’ll begin on normal but as you progress into the faster speeds, completing the necessary objectives will become quite a challenge and a must if you wish to unlock all available content.

Each race within the challenge mode has a different requirement. Some might include acquiring the most points within a specific time or laps. Others will require completing a number of laps under a set-time or finishing a lap without hitting mines or other obstacles that can cause the vehicle to explode.

The vehicle controls are extremely simple. Outside of the gas and brake, the only other button to worry about is the one to trigger the items you collect. There are also a lot of unlockables to be found. There are 8 different car models with half of them locked until later in the game. The same goes for the courses; there are 18 available with the majority inaccessible until reached in the challenge mode.

This is one of the set-backs behind the game though. With so much content available, it’s a shame such a large chunk of it is hidden. Courses are unlocked rather slowly. During the first series of races in normal mode, the same courses repeat much too frequently and it would have been better if each race, or every other race, unlocked a new course. As for the cars, there is also no way of knowing what is required to unlock them and it ultimately feels rather random.

It’s clear to see that TNT Racers is meant for multiplayer enjoyment and thankfully, there is both Ad-Hoc and Online options available. If there are friends nearby with a copy, setting up and enjoying any number of races is pretty easy. For those wanting to play against others online, good luck with that. During my play time, not once was I able to connect to someone. Not once. The lack of online players hurts the overall enjoyment, especially if you want to race against other gamers rather than flying solo.

Visually, TNT Racers plays well thanks to the interesting course designs available, but does suffer a bit of problems with its camera. The camera is always fixed on the car leading so if you trail too much behind, your vehicle will disappear and lose potential points. This doesn’t appear as a problem at first but as you get into the more challenging race types, it does begin to cause frustration. As for the music, the sound effects are serviceable but nothing really worth mentioning. The same goes for the game’s jazz inspired soundtrack; it won’t annoy you but chances are, you’ll probably play this game with the sound off.

Conclusion

TNT Racers is a good game that desperately needs to have more people playing online to make it a stand out title. The single-player portion is alright, but the large gaps between unlocking additional content makes racing the same few courses a tad uninspiring at times. If you can organize some races with friends nearby, you will definitely enjoy yourself; but if you’re playing alone or are hoping for some online multiplayer enjoyment, be prepared to wait.