Nickelodeon Kart Racers 3: Slime Speedway is a casual racing game developed by Bamtang Games and published by GameMill Entertainment. It was released on the 14th of October 2022 and is available on Steam and the PlayStation Store for PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 consoles.
In this third entry from the Nickelodeon Kart Racers series, you will run into characters from various Nickelodeon animated series, known as “Nicktoons”. There are playable characters from well known series like Avatar: The Last Airbender, Garfield, The Ren & Stimpy Show, SpongeBob SquarePants, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to name a few.
The game is a kart racer, built in the Unreal Engine, that offers us… Well, first you will have to complete the tutorial that will teach you how to use power-ups, jump and drift through the track to get a speed boost. After you complete it, the tutorial that is, you will be able to choose between Single Player, Multiplayer and Online modes.
Single Player consists of Slime Scramble, which is basically a career mode, Free Race, Time Trial, Challenges and Arena. The Multiplayer mode offers a couch multiplayer in which two, three or four players can compete it. Again, you can go for the cups in Slime Scramble mode, or play a Free Race and Arena. The Online mode features Matchmaking or a Private Match option in which you can compete in the same races as in the Multiplayer mode. Let us focus now on the Single Player Slime Scramble mode.
Slime Scramble offers three different speeds, which are basically difficulties. Slow speed is meant to be played by the kart racing beginners because the opponents are quite forgiving. Medium speed is the middle option, and we will test the game on that difficulty. Fast speed features challenging opponents, and there is also an Insane speed available to be unlocked.
There are ten cups available to race in, each with four different and unique tracks. After choosing the cup you will compete in, it is time to select your driver. Each of them has different stats that come in weight, speed, acceleration, handling and turbo. Fourteen drivers are available in the beginning, but more will unlock as you progress through the game – forty-two are there in total.
When you have selected the driver, you need to choose your vehicle. You can select between a kart or a bike, and later on you can modify the wheels, exhaust pipes and paint jobs. Last but not least, you need to choose your Chief that will help you with a perk during the race, and a Crew Engineer and Crew Mechanic that support your play style.
After all of that is selected and done, we can finally start racing. The game’s gameplay is similar to all of the other kart racers you have played in the past. You will need to be the fastest and most cunning with the power-ups you will pick up. Jump on ramps and waves, drift as much as you can through the corners to get speed boosts and disable your opponents with your power-ups. That is how kart racers work and Nickelodeon Kart Racers 3: Slime Speedway is not any different, except it is made out of Nickelodeon characters and worlds.
Let us talk about the other game modes now for a bit. In the Free Race mode you can tailor the racing experience to your liking, as you can set your own rules. You are able to choose the game’s speed, bot difficulty, pit crew, laps and items. Time Trial is self-explanatory, race in different tracks trying to beat your fastest time and pre-made ghosts’ times. Challenges represent a different challenge you need to complete during a set race, from hitting targets and getting slime tokens, to simply winning the race. Arena modes are quite interesting, four of them are available. In Demolition you need to hit opponents ten times to win, Control the Golden Spatula requires you to be in possession of the Golden spatula for fifteen seconds three times to win, in Slime Trails you need to charge your vehicle with slime and cover more ground than the other team to win, and lastly Jellyspotters requires to capture the Jellyfish before time runs out.
The tracks are pretty well made and include shortcuts and various hazards you will need to avoid. But that is nothing new, since we are already used to those things from previous kart racers. As far as the graphics go, they are okay and the animations do not stand out either. More details should have been incorporated around the featured tracks to make everything more vivid. We cannot say the game is not colourful, because it is, but is nothing special graphically. Sounds are kind of poor as well, as the game features a quite boring soundtrack. The sounds effects also fail to entertain and the characters’ catchphrases fall short too and are quite repetitive.
You can buy Nickelodeon Kart Racers 3: Slime Speedway on Steam or the PlayStation Store as a PlayStation 5/PlayStation 4 bundle. It will cost you 49,99 EUR in both instances.
