"We were excited to work with the Karate Kid franchise and integrate it with this genre, as we saw a great fit for it."

The beat ’em up genre has enjoyed an incredible resurgence in recent years, which, combined with the obvious draw of the Karate Kid IP, means there’s going to be a lot of eyes on The Karate Kid: Street Rumble. Does that bring added pressure?

We didn’t feel pressured by the popularity of the beat ’em up genre. On the contrary, we saw it as a great opportunity to put our own twist on an established market. At the start of the project, we played many beat ’em up games, both classic and modern. After our analysis, we came up with the “Focus bar,” a dynamic resource that can be used both defensively and offensively, rewarding an aggressive playstyle and changing the classic playability of beat ’em ups. We were also excited to work with the Karate Kid franchise and integrate it with this genre, as we saw a great fit for it.

The game features a gorgeous retro 16-bit aesthetic. What was the process like of landing on this look for the game? What other alternatives did you consider?

From an art direction perspective, our goal was to capture the essence of nostalgia from the golden age of beat’em ups, especially considering this IP originated in that era. Once this direction was decided, the rest of the process became simpler: we needed to blend the old-school aesthetic with modern mechanics and techniques. To achieve this, we implemented combos with fluid animations and strong keyframes, along with vibrant colors in the visual effects, while always maintaining a limited color palette.

Pixel art was our first choice, although we explored various alternatives and styles during development. We experimented with smaller designs, more cartoonish ones, and even some more realistic styles. Each of these styles affected the design of the characters, environments, and their color palette, influencing what we wanted to convey with our game. Ultimately, we felt we made the right decision with the chosen direction for the project. As fans of the genre, we couldn’t resist paying homage to iconic games like TMNT.

"Pixel art was our first choice, although we explored various alternatives and styles during development."

The Karate Kid: Street Rumble is going to cover the story of the entire original trilogy, but was there ever a discussion within the development team to perhaps tell a different story set in the same universe? What drove the decision to retell those iconic stories?

The original idea was to make a game where you started a new character in the world of the Karate Kid, selecting which dojo you wanted to join and learning new abilities with the iconic characters as NPCs. Ultimately, we decided to focus on the nostalgia and love for the original trilogy considering this is its 40^th Anniversary since its inception. This way we could deliver to fans a way for them to connect more intimately with the original story and allow the players to experience the glory that it is.

What can you tell us about the combat in The Karate Kid: Street Rumble? Should players expect a variety of karate moves and combos? This being a beat ’em up, what role will weapon pickups play?

We wanted to give players freedom when exploring their moves and the combat system of the game. Every character has multiple combos mixing light, heavy, and signature moves, as well as passives that level up with your character. Additionally, each playable character has different play styles, allowing the player to explore different ways to beat the game. The game doesn’t feature weapon pickups, this decision was made early in development as we felt it didn’t fit the franchise.

What should players expect from the different stages they’ll be going through in the game? How interactive will each stage be? What kind of level of detail should players expect?

Each of the stages represents iconic moments from the three movies. It was very important for us to capture the feeling of the original story in our detailed pixel art. To achieve this, we conducted extensive research on the movies themselves and the 80s culture. Players will find a high level of detail and numerous small easter eggs. If a few kids ask their parents to go to an arcade shop after playing our game, it means we achieved our objective.

"We wanted to give players freedom when exploring their moves and the combat system of the game. Every character has multiple combos mixing light, heavy, and signature moves, as well as passives that level up with your character."

Roughly how long will an average playthrough of the game be?

Completing the story once should take a few hours, but that’s only a fraction of the full content of the game! You’ll need to go back and play more to see all the game’s content including playing as the other characters, mastering their unique moves, and trying out additional game modes.

Do you plan on also offering an online co-op option down the line?

While we aren’t in a position to discuss confidential plans, the success of the franchise can certainly open up a lot of opportunities for potential offerings down the road!

Right off the bat, TMNT Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants makes that much abundantly clear. On a surface level, and for anyone who’s only looking to engage with the game in casual fashion, there’s certainly some mindless fun to be had here, especially if you play it in local co-op, but the game lacks the sort of depth and mechanical tightness that you’d want from a Turtles beat ’em up. Your moveset, for instance, is surprisingly limited. You can attack enemies using one button, jump up using another, and acquire the occasional pick up or item to throw at nearby foes. You can also unleash a special Turtle Power that attacks all on-screen foes once you’ve filled up a bar- and that’s pretty much it. If you’re looking for meaningful weapon variety, different combos to master, or new moves and abilities to learn, TMNT Arcade will likely let you down with its straightforward offerings.

"And though it’s a functional game in the barest sense, TMNT Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants ends up falling short in some key areas where a beat ’em up can’t really afford to stumble."

Weapon pickups in particular are quite disappointing. Ordinarily a staple of the genre that can make or break a game, in TMNT Arcade, the items and weapons that you can pick up during gameplay come from a painfully limited pool, while also lacking imagination and inventiveness. Pickups range from shuriken, garbage cans, exploding barrels, and more to items that temporarily let you spin about the battlefield inside of your shell, or summon allies for momentary aid. In total, however, the amount of options leaves a lot to be desired, and even running through the game’s six levels just once, pickups quickly start feeling repetitive.

Other issues exacerbate the flaws in TMNT Arcade’s lean gameplay core. There are four playable characters with Leonardo, Donatello, Michaelangelo, and Raphael, but virtually all of them play identically. At first glance, they do have some noticeable differences in their special Turtle Powers and the weapons that they use, but it doesn’t take long for it to become clear that all of those changes are purely cosmetic. Turtle Powers all have the exact same effect – all on-screen enemies (barring bosses) are obliterated – even if they each have their own unique animations, while the different weapons each Turtle wields don’t come with any actual differences in terms of range, speed, attack power, or anything of the sort.

Then there’s the fact that the general game feel in TMNT Arcade is probably best described as “sluggish”, which is perhaps its most glaring issue. You expect a beat ’em up to have tight and responsive controls, for it to have crunching and weighty feedback during combat, but all of these things are missing here. Movement feels slow, and especially in moments where you’re expected to quickly get out of the way of an incoming attack or avoid an environmental hazard, the frustratingly lethargic movement can make it feel like you’re wading through molasses. Even more unforgiving is how tame and soft the combat feels- very rarely does a hit connect with any real impact, thanks to the almost complete lack of the sort of weighty crunch that is so crucial to the moment-to-moment experience in any game that’s focused on combat, let alone a beat ’em up.

Clearly, then, there’s a lot of significant issues to contend with in TMNT Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants. It’s not all bad though. Bosses, for instance, can be occasionally fun, while the game does have a couple of decently designed stages. One in particular that sees you moving through an amusement park is a genuinely fun one with its charming house of horrors and its unique environmental hazards- or it would be, at least, if the game didn’t have as many major issues in crucial areas as it does. Again, for those who’re just looking to just dip in for a casual jaunt through a straightforward beat ’em up, running through each level once and fighting against their bosses can be enjoyable, but the more you engage with the game, the more frustratingly apparent its issues become.

"Even more unforgiving is how tame and soft the combat feels- very rarely does a hit connect with any real impact, thanks to the almost complete lack of the sort of weighty crunch that is so crucial to the moment-to-moment experience in any game that’s focused on combat, let alone a beat ’em up."

In fact, that feels almost like an inevitability with this game, because of how lean its content offerings are- you can easily blow through all of its levels in an hour (or two at most). Of course, shorter runtimes are par for the course for the vast majority of beat ’em ups, but where the good beat ’em ups encourage you to run through their levels repeatedly to try and maximize your scores, find new secrets, and the like, in TMNT Arcade, what you see is exactly what you get, which means there’s little to no reason to replay the levels. Each playthrough of a level is bound to feel almost exactly the same, with little to no variation to speak of. Yes, you can try and beat high scores to climb higher in the leaderboards, but when the core gameplay foundation is as shallow and flawed as it is here, why exactly would you want to?

Launching at a price of $29.99, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants doesn’t have nearly enough meat on its bones to justify its price of admission. Not only are its content offerings surprisingly lean, it also doesn’t offer too much replay value. On top of that, it commits the even graver error of falling short with its core mechanics. With beat ’em ups, a relative lack of content can be much easier to forgive if the core gameplay is fun, but TMNT Arcade falls short of the mark even in this area. Add to that the bland visuals, a non-existent narrative framework, and polish issues (such as frequently glitchy audio mixing and volume levels), and it becomes increasingly harder to freely recommend this game to anywhere, no matter how big of a fan you are of beat ’em ups or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IP.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.

An expanded version of the 2017 arcade game of the same name by developer Raw Thrills, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants features solo play, as well as local co-op action for up to four players together on all platforms. The game is based on the more modern incarnation of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles by Nickelodeon.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants features six stages and 13 different boss battles. This includes three new stages and six new boss battles that weren’t originally in the arcade title. Players will be able to take on the roles of any of the four turtles, and can use their special super attacks to take on hordes of enemies.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants, originally released on arcade machines back in 2017 by Raw Thrills, will feature the voice actors from the show reprising their roles. The game will also include 4-player local co-op multiplayer.

The game will feature 12 stages, along with 19 boss fights for its home release. For comparison, the original arcade release featured 6 stages and 13 boss fights. The title acts as a spiritual successor to classic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade games.

Fans of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have had it quite good in recent times, with the critically acclaimed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge having come out a couple of years ago, followed by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection. Another game, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin, is also in development.

The Walking Dead: Destinies – published by GameMill Entertainment, the same company that also inflicted the aforementioned Skull Island on gaming audiences – is an unequivocal mess. Even the most disastrous of games often have at least some redeeming qualities, but I struggle to find any of them here. On a conceptual level, Destinies has an intriguing premise, but it fails in executing even its most fundamental and basic ideas so spectacularly, it almost doesn’t feel like it’s worth it to talk about how it fumbles the relatively more ambitious ones.

"There have been quite a few notable contenders for the ignominious “worst game of 2023” crown, games that have not only failed, but failed so spectacularly that the masses have been forced to sit up and take notice. And I’m afraid to say that another game has just joined that list."

The Walking Dead: Destinies covers the first three and a half seasons of the once-acclaimed TV show, starting with Rick Grimes waking up from a coma in a hospital that’s been overrun by the undead, and ending with the Governor’s attack on the prison. Its biggest hook is letting you make key decisions during certain points of the story, theoretically allowing you to chart a very different tale from the one that plays out in the show, including completely changing the fates of several characters based on your decisions.

On paper, that’s certainly an intriguing premise, but The Walking Dead: Destinies implements it in the most vapid, uninteresting way possible. Who lives and who dies has little to no impact on how the main story plays out. The important events that happened in the show are going to happen regardless, with some variations from time to time, and by and large, the only thing your decisions will change is the characters that will be present for those events. Even calling what the game does with its central hook the bare minimum would be a charitable description.

It doesn’t help that in virtually every aspect of the storytelling department, The Walking Dead: Destinies keeps falling flat on its face. The vast majority of cutscenes are little more than series of still images with voiceovers, and somehow, even they manage to be horribly awkward and stilted. The voice acting does the game no favours either, with every single character managing to sound embarrassingly awful so consistently that it would almost be impressive if it weren’t so painful to listen to. Meanwhile, across its brief runtime, the game also rushes through the story way too quickly, often cutting out crucial sequences or entire characters who, in the show, were very much part of the main cast. Even for the most dedicated Walking Dead fans, there’s little of value to be found here.

Where the moment-to-moment action is concerned, The Walking Dead: Destinies blends stealth and combat in linear missions, though both those aspects are incredibly barebones. Where stealth is concerned, bugs frequently mar the experience, from enemies being able to see you when they shouldn’t (or not being able to see you when they should) to prompts for stealth kills often only appearing at oddly specific angles. Even when things do work as intended, it’s incredibly easy to cheese enemies and lure them towards you one-by-one from a distance, thanks to which a feeling of repetition quickly sets in.

"Who lives and who dies has little to no impact on how the main story plays out. The important events that happened in the show are going to happen regardless, with some variations from time to time, and by and large, the only thing your decisions will change is the characters that will be present for those events."

Combat isn’t much better either, especially if it’s the melee combat you’re talking about, which is thanks in large part to the game’s oddly stringent implementation of a stamina bar. Even on the default difficulty, taking out a single enemy can fully deplete your stamina, which means you’re forced to distance yourself from your foes and wait a couple of seconds while your stamina recovers before you can move in for the next kill. Rather than allowing you to plow through enemies with different melee weapons, the game forces you to step back after virtually every kill, which, as you might imagine, quickly becomes frustrating. Admittedly, things are a little better where the shooting mechanics are concerned, but the most that can be said about them is that they’re not completely broken and work the way you would expect from any game that has third-person shooting.

But even that tiniest of potential victories isn’t allowed to be a mini-saving grace, because every single combat encounter in The Walking Dead: Destinies feels like an absolute chore. For the most part, the game’s idea of difficulty is to blame for that, because any time it wants to ramp up the challenge, it does so in the cheapest way possible, and just chucks a truckload of enemies at you, which only serves to highlight the game’s moment-to-moment mechanical issues that much more.

Even in a much better game, that sort of difficulty can be frustrating, but here, it almost feels like excessive punishment for a crime you didn’t commit. Simple movement feels awkward and sluggish, not just because the controls are as clunky as they are, but also because of smaller issues that add up to cause frequent frustration, like coming to an abrupt dead stop while running away from a horde of walkers because you touched the geometry of a small object. By throwing a bunch of enemies at you in the name of challenge, the only thing The Walking Dead: Destinies does is blast a bright spotlight on those core issues.

On a visual and technical level, the game is just as much of a mess as it is everywhere else. From the ugliest possible faces I’ve seen in a game in a long, long time to the bland and muddy environments to the choppy and janky animations across the board, The Walking Dead: Destinies feels so technically bankrupt, it would have caught flak for its deficiencies in this area even if it had released twenty years ago. There’s no shortage of glitches either, from entire sections being completely devoid of any enemies when they clearly shouldn’t be to the kind of bugs that can block progress. I don’t want to be too harsh with my criticism here, because clearly, this was a game built on a tiny budget by a small team, and obviously, no one should have been going into it with high expectations anyway, given the fact that the publisher, GameMill Entertainment, isn’t exactly known for putting out the most polished or well-produced games. But looking at what’s on offer here, where not even the bare minimum is being accomplished, I find it difficult to cut the game any kind of slack.

"The Walking Dead: Destinies feels so technically bankrupt, it would have caught flak for its deficiencies in this area even if it had released twenty years ago."

Quite frequently, we hear people wondering how certain games were allowed to get past quality control and be released to world, and though often there’s at least a hint of exaggeration in that notion, in the case of The Walking Dead: Destinies, even that criticism doesn’t fully capture the depths the game sinks to. Somehow, with all of the game’s many, many issues, GameMill Entertainment has the audacity to price it at $50, which should tell you all you need to know about how much the publisher was concerned with delivering a product that was actually fun in even the most superficial way possible.

This game was reviewed on the Xbox Series X.

Rather than following the original comic series, The Walking Dead: Destinies is instead based on AMC’s adaptation of The Walking Dead on TV. The game puts players in scenes from the show, giving them complete freedom to take on different situations in different ways.

On the gameplay side of things, The Walking Dead: Destinies is a third-person action-adventure game. The title kicks things off by putting players in the shoes of Rick Grimes as he explores a hospital filled with Walkers. Grimes will have to assemble allies as he makes his way through iconic locations from the TV show, including Atlanta, the Greene Family Farm, and the prison.

A PC release of The Walking Dead: Destinies is planned for December 1.

At its core, Skull Island: Rise of Kong is essentially a hack-and-slash action game with elements of platforming. The game revolves around the eponymous Kong, and his formative years after his parents are murdered by a vicious dinosaur named Gaw. From a gameplay standpoint, just about every aspect of the game feels like an exercise in poor design and implementation.

To start out with, Kong doesn’t have much in the way of special moves or attacks, limited largely to a shoulder tackle, a 3-hit combo, and the ability to use a heavy attack as a combo finisher. The game provides a taste of the potential abilities Kong will get by putting players in the shoes of his mother for its prologue chapter, which also acts as a tutorial. Some of the fancier abilities that you get teased with include an aimed jump, the ability to headbutt rocks, and the ability to pound the ground so hard that it gives way to the rest of the level.

"The game revolves around the eponymous Kong, and his formative years after his parents are murdered by a vicious dinosaur named Gaw."

Unfortunately, the combat in Skull Island: Rise of Kong, despite its efforts, is terrible. There is little to no reaction by the game’s various enemies to being hit, and it often feels like the enemy animations are skipping over some vital parts. For example, pick up and throw a small raptor and it’ll just about immediately get up with no indication that it was flung away from Kong in the first place. Considering how much of the game’s combat feels like an afterthought—a terrible idea when you consider the fact that combat is pretty much all the game has going for it—the standard 3-hit combo often tends to be the only real way to dispatch enemies, so you won’t really end up caring about any new abilities you unlock.

Speaking of combat, enemy AI is also horrendously broken. An early example of the enemy AI being terrible was the climactic boss fight against Gaw at the end of the prologue, where I was able to simply break Gaw’s scripting by constantly running around it in circles, essentially freezing Gaw in place, constantly turning to get a closer look at you. Smaller enemies don’t fare much better; raptors and crabs will do little more than charge at you in a straight line, with the former often looking downright hilarious doing it since they constantly kept spawning in and running towards me.

The ability to pick up and throw smaller enemies around is borderline useless if you want to use it for anything more than getting a quick laugh. The smaller enemies don’t really seem to take any damage, even if you throw them at walls, and like I said before, they’ll just get right back up and come at you again. The fact that the speed of the throwing animation is a potential upgrade in the skill tree also makes the very idea of trying to use the ability early on against larger enemies ridiculous, since you’ll often end up getting hit by avoidable attacks in your attempts to throw something at the enemy.

"I was able to simply break Gaw’s scripting by constantly running around it in circles"

Even the game’s camera is one of the worst I’ve seen since before developers started designing third-person games around letting the player control the camera. On its own, the camera already feels too far away from Kong, offering a massive field of view, but at the same time just about ruining any sense of scale or perspective the game might be going for. There’s also a lock-on, which pulls the camera back even further, and often allows level geometry—like branches or leaves of a tree—to get in the way of letting you see what’s happening.

Combat isn’t the only place where Skull Island: Rise of Kong fails itself, however. Even just the simple act of exploring its levels often turns into exercises in frustration and failure. At the very core level, the game doesn’t control well. Kong’s animations are selectively either too sudden, or too slow. Hit the jump button, for example, and Kong will shoot straight for the sky. A sprinting jump, on the other hand, seems to take a few frames to go off, and could often mean that you miss your jump because you ran out of land to sprint on, needing you to go all the way back to start all over.

The level design itself isn’t really anything to write home about either. Levels are split into small arenas where you fight things, and long corridors where you’ll be running around and platforming. In fact, the level design downright discourages exploration, since taking a side-path will likely ultimately loop back around into earlier in the level, essentially wasting quite a bit of your time without giving you much to show for it. Sure, there are collectibles to gather, but these collectibles are little more than 3D models in a menu; there’s no backstory or lore associated with them, and even the models themselves tend to glitch out, like showing you a skull while you’ve selected the chest in the game’s collectibles menu.

"Combat isn’t the only place where Skull Island: Rise of Kong fails itself"

Skull Island: Rise of Kong tries to be somewhat clever with its level design by throwing in some metroidvania elements here and there; there are a couple of abilities you need to be able to fully explore the game’s levels. That means that if you want to destroy a wall of rocks that might be hiding yet another useless collectible, you’ll have to come back once you’ve unlocked the ability to headbutt walls. The game even has a skill tree where you can expand on some of Kong’s capabilities. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t really make unlocking new abilities easy, and even just the base level upgrades cost 5 skill points. For the sake of context, it took me around an hour’s worth of play time, which involved finishing the entire prologue, and getting into a fair number of fights, before I got my first skill point.

Visually, the game can often look downright ugly owing to its art style, which seems to be going for something resembling a hyper-stylized look with the use of contrasting colors, sharp lighting and shadows, and bold highlights. Sadly, it ends up looking like what I expect a game to look like when it’s early in development, and making use of placeholder graphics.

Alongside its other ideas also being rather poor, a running theme with Skull Island: Rise of Kong is a lack of polish. The game has terrible visuals, some downright horrendous gameplay, and level design that seems to be more keen on wasting your time rather than presenting you with any interesting challenges or rewards. The level of polish is so low, that the game’s taskbar icon on Windows is just the standard placeholder icon any game developed in Unreal Engine has. Unless you’re a massive fan of monkeys, stay clear of this game.

This game was reviewed on the PC.

One of the developers has revealed that work on the game started back in June 2022, and was set to go on until June 2, 2023.

“The development process of this game was started in June of last year and it was aimed to end on June 2nd this year,” said the developer, who remains anonymous. “So one year development process.”

A former developer from IguanaBee stated that this is par for the course for working with publisher GameMill. The publisher reportedly has a reputation for contracting studios to develop games based on major IPs in short periods of time for quick releases.

“It was very common for us not to be provided with all the information about the project,” said the former developer. “Which was quite frustrating when working because we had to improvise with the limited information we had on hand.”

Going by the developers that spoke to The Verge, this seems to also come down to the fact that IguanaBee as a studio was trapped in a never-ending cycle of having to develop games on a contractual basis with publishers in order to keep the studio open.

It is worth noting that, typically, a game can take anywhere from a year to half a decade to develop, depending on the scope of the game and the size of the studio. Even indie studios tend to typically need longer than a single year to develop games for modern systems. Short single-year turnaround time for game development was much more common in the past, when gaming platforms were more technically limited.

Other developers working at the studio have stated that IguanaBee tends to take on these contracts in order to be able to make games it actually wants to make.

“To be honest, they seemed much more motivated and enthusiastic than the rest of the team working for GameMill. Who knows why,” said the former developer in reference to the team at the studio working on puzzle platformer What Lies in the Multiverse.

“It’s a love/hate relationship because they are the ones who accept or give the projects and Iguanabee doesn’t have the means to develop almost anything on its own because well, money,” said the first anonymous developer, who also goes on to talk about the short deadline needing quite a bit of crunch.

“The crunch was really set in motion in February,” said the developer. “I was on automatic pilot by the end of February because all hope was lost.”

The Walking Dead: Destinies is a narrative-focused third-person game that puts players in the shoes of a number of characters from the TV show. Starting things off as Rick Grimes, players will be able to assemble allies and fight their way through the apocalypse.

The game also features moments where players can make important choices which might end up changing how the story plays out. Locations from the show will be present in the game, including Atlanta, the Greene family farm, the prison, and Woodbury.

The Walking Dead: Destinies was announced back in August. Publisher GameMill has previously stated that the title will feature more than a dozen characters from the show, including Michonne, Shane, and Carol, with each character having their own unique abilities and arsenals.

Like Mario Kart, and that comparison is ever-present, NASCAR Arcade Rush is all about the gameplay. There’s almost nothing in the way of a story mode, and it does everything it can to avoid menu time and get you into the game proper. The closest thing there is to a true story mode is the Cup Series, a series of four-race championships where you rack up points with your finishes in 12-driver races. Sound familiar? What holds this back, though, is what ends up holding much of the game back in its structure: there isn’t enough content to keep it going. Despite having 9 total cups with 4 races each, the game only features 12 total tracks, meaning that every track will be repeated 3 times on average.

"From the relative lack of content to the clear, heavy inspiration from the Mario Kart series, there’s not much about NASCAR Arcade Rush that’s unique. That’s not to say it’s not fun. It takes everything it can from those that came before it and hits the mark every once in a while with high-intensity photo finishes, but I can’t imagine I’ll be thinking about this game much after I set it down."

The tracks themselves aren’t much to speak about, either. They follow a similar formula to Mario Kart tracks, with their vibrant greens and oranges and their twisting, turning paths. There are even the token short tracks that are effectively circles but require more laps than normal. Each is meant to be based loosely on a real-life NASCAR track, like Daytona or Talladega, but reimagined for an arcade racer. While I like the idea behind this, it’s the closest the tracks, or really any part of the game, get to resembling any part of real-life NASCAR. If there weren’t big flashing NASCAR logos and a pre-race voiceover introducing the tracks, you’d hardly be able to notice the influence.

While it’s nice to have all tracks and modes unlocked from the start, and props to developer Team6 for avoiding microtransactions or pay-to-win in any form, it does feel barebones in your goals or motivation. The only real form of progression throughout the entire game is the gathering of Cup Points, which you earn from completing individual Cup Series championships, as well as traditional leveling, which unlocks cosmetic pieces you can add to either your driver or your car. Especially given that you’ll be replaying the same tracks as you unlock later Cup Series championships, the game doesn’t give you much of a reason to care about what you’re doing or why you’re doing it. There aren’t even any references to real-life NASCAR in the cars or the drivers. Every driver is a generic avatar, and every car a generic tuning kit, even further ingraining that this is hardly a NASCAR game as much as it is a quick cart racer with a name put on top of it.

The only other modes are Time Attack, a series of solo time trials on each track, and the natural quickplay modes that come in offline single-player or split-screen and online varieties. Again, props to Team6 for including each of these modes, especially a split-screen mode, when many games are moving away from them, but since there isn’t much in the way of progression or motivation to unlock any tracks or additional material content, I have a hard time seeing where any staying power will come from.

"While it’s nice to have all tracks and modes unlocked from the start, and props to developer Team6 for avoiding microtransactions or pay-to-win in any form, it does feel barebones in your goals or motivation."

What most cart racers, especially Mario Kart, hinge on, though, is the racing itself, and NASCAR Arcade Rush is relatively middle of the pack in its feel and mechanics. Races consist of 12 drivers primarily racing the traditional three laps, and for the most part, the actual racing feels good. It’s a classic arcade feel with tight controls, a boost meter, and high-intensity races that can see you crashing and getting back into the fray in a matter of seconds. The primary issue is that it doesn’t go much deeper than this. Tuning kits, the cosmetic changes you can make to your car, don’t make an impact on the functionality of the car, so the vehicle you’re driving in your first race is functionally the same as the one you’re driving in your hundredth. Your driver, which you can customize despite never seeing them outside of menus and podiums, also doesn’t impact your stats or skills. It all gives a feel that the game is static, making no changes to gameplay and having minimal replay value unless you’re playing with friends.

On the track, I’m willing to cut the game a bit of slack, as its traditional cart racing feel makes up for much of the game’s content deficiencies until you’ve had your share. The couple of wrinkles that differ from any expected NASCAR racing are the boost meter and the on-track boost lanes. Like with many in the genre, you gather boost for your car by hitting specific orange boost pads on the track, and your ability to manage your stamina will likely be a key factor in whether you can snag a podium spot. The on-track boost lanes are like extended boost pads that bump up your speed while you’re on them. Boosting is especially fun, probably the most enjoyable, satisfying mechanic in the game, and it’s a vital aspect of success. Especially on Elite difficulty, the harder of the two difficulties offered, one of the major factors in getting better at the game is maximizing the time spent above your normal speeds.

The only other nuance in the gameplay at large is the Rival system, which is almost not worth mentioning. When you make contact with another car or either pass or get passed in a vital moment in the race, like in the final lap or when one of you is in the lead, you get a notification that you made a new rival. This rival then gets an icon on top of their car, and then functionally nothing changes. There are no pre- or post-race mentions of rivals, no reference to them outside of when you make a new rival, and no noticeable changes to gameplay or your skills. It’s a system that feels like it was going somewhere but was unfinished or had no new ideas, and I harp on it because it’s the only semi-unique mechanic the game could have had going for it. Sadly, though, it becomes an afterthought.

"The only other nuance in the gameplay at large is the Rival system, which is almost not worth mentioning."

NASCAR Arcade Rush feels like it could have been much more than it is, because in its current state, it feels like a momentarily fun flash in the pan that rips more from Mario Kart than it has ideas of its own. It has almost no mention of NASCAR aside from the names of its tracks, and while its traditional cart racing gameplay has potential and a few moments of high intensity, it doesn’t set itself apart from any of the games that came before it. Given my affinity for much of the genre, I wanted to like NASCAR Arcade Rush more than I did, but in the end, it stalls much earlier than it should have.

This game was reviewed on the Xbox Series X.