Smurfs Kart

I've reviewed a lot of kart racers and my tolerance for Mario Kart clones is honestly pretty low, so take that as context: Smurfs Kart cleared the bar of being playable without clearing much else. Eden Games, the studio behind V-Rally and Test Drive Unlimited, built something that handles acceptably and runs at 60fps on PC and Xbox, but the ceiling on this one hits you in the face about 45 minutes in. The on-track mechanics are a direct copy of the formula you already know. Drifting is bound to the right trigger and chains into a tiered speed boost depending on how long you hold the slide, which is actually the one area where there is something to refine. Power-ups are the usual assortment reskinned for the Smurfs universe: acorns standing in for red shells, dirt clumps instead of bananas, homing bees that lock onto whoever is ahead of you. Each of the 12 characters brings one personal ability on top of the shared pool. Jokey's exploding present drops randomly on nearby racers; Handy deploys a drone screen that clears obstacles ahead of you. That per-character special is genuinely the most interesting mechanical idea in the game, and it does not get developed far enough. Character stats are identical across the board, so your pick is almost entirely cosmetic beyond the special ability. Content is where this falls apart for anyone over the age of eight. There are 12 tracks split across three Grand Prix cups of four races each, plus mirrored versions the developer uses to pad the number. That is a thin pool. Two speed modes, Fun and Hyperspeed, roughly mimic cc ratings but Hyperspeed never feels as fast as the name suggests. There is no online multiplayer at all, which, in a kart racer released in 2023, is a real choice. Local split-screen up to four players works and holds its frame rate, which is something. Time Challenge mode puts ghost images of other racers on the track for solo time attack runs, and an online leaderboard exists for that mode specifically. Auto-acceleration and steering assist are on by default, which is nice for young players but annoying if you launch straight into a race without checking settings first. For the competitive crowd: there is no ranked mode, no online play period, and the AI tuning is inconsistent. Early cups are trivially easy; the rubber-band item distribution can stunlock you out of nowhere even at the front of the pack. Achievement hunters on Steam should know the unlock tracking has documented bugs that can desync from save files, and no updates have shipped since launch. The sticker album adds a thin layer of progression that gives you a reason to cycle through characters, but grinding 12 tracks repeatedly with each of 12 Smurfs is exactly as repetitive as it sounds. If you came here for a shooter-adjacent competitive experience with netcode to evaluate, wrong page entirely. This game is for the family TV, controller handed to a six-year-old.

Fred · Scout Team

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