Nickelodeon Kart Racers 3: Slime Speedway (PlayStation 5) Review

By Athanasios 08.06.2023

Review for Nickelodeon Kart Racers 3: Slime Speedway on PlayStation 5

For quite some time, video games based on a movie, comic book, cartoon, and so on and forth were… well, pieces of garbage, honestly. While those who didn't grew up in the '80s/'90s have been more fortunate, there is another problem nowadays: fanservice. Many of those titles don't really care about being solid, enjoyable experiences, and mostly try to offer lots of content to please fans. The same has been happening with the Nickelodeon Kart Racers line of racing games, which are good… but not as good as they could be. The perfect example would be Nickelodeon Kart Racers 3: Slime Speedway, as it is better than the ones before it, but still can't compete with the genre's big ones.

30+ characters have been crammed up here, and it's hard to not appreciate the fact that this will please old and new fans alike, as the roster involves age-old, cult characters like Ren and Stimpy, as well as modern classics the likes of SpongeBob. Yours truly particularly loved the inclusion of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in their '80s look. Add to that plenty of tracks, and tons of customisation for the karts themselves, and you are in for quite the ride. Or are you? Sadly, Nickelodeon Kart Racers 3 is content with being a slightly better version of what came before and nothing more than that.

It's a formulaic kart racer, complete with in-track pick-ups and the like. If you have played any of the other kart racers, familiarity will soon kick in. It's nice and all, and easy to pick up and play, but why pick this and not something else? The only addition to the standard recipe seems to be the titular Slime Speedway, which is a separate path, sort of like a more challenging shortcut, on which one can build up a meter that in turn enables activating an ability. The thing is that most of the time there's little incentive to follow said shortcut, especially in harder difficulties or in the Time Trial mode, as these paths aren't any faster than the original ones. All in all a cool addition, but nothing spectacular.

Screenshot for Nickelodeon Kart Racers 3: Slime Speedway on PlayStation 5

Variety rather than quality is the name of the game. Said variety ends up being wasted on a game that's not something special, with forgettable tracks, mechanics that feel like a watered down version of better kart racers, and finally a CPU that is frankly not that eager to win. You can play online matches, but good luck finding someone to do that. On the bright side, there are a couple of different modes to try out apart from the Cup Races which are the main dish, with some examples being: Challenge, which has the players completing certain objectives; Demolition, a free-for-all brawl where racers fight each other; and Slime Trails which has you paint the track Splatoon-style, and more. None of these modes will glue you to your seat, but it's nice that they are there.

In the end, like the ones before it, this doesn't have what it takes to be a great kart racer. It's just a nice opportunity for the kiddos, or those who want to be kiddos for a few evenings or so, to have fun with characters from Nickelodeon. It helps a lot that visually it's the best in the series by far - basically a cartoon brought to life. There's not something to point at and call it next-gen, though. It's a title that feels as if it is standing right between the two systems, with the only thing that makes it clear that this runs on a PS5 being the super-fast loading times.

Screenshot for Nickelodeon Kart Racers 3: Slime Speedway on PlayStation 5

Cubed3 Rating

6/10
Rated 6 out of 10

Good

Nickelodeon Kart Racers 3: Slime Speedway is… nice. Just that. Nice. It's a nice and simple kart racer. It's cool that you can play as SpongeBob and race against TMNT's Raphael and Avatar's Aang, while Garfield, Ren, and Stimpy try to get close, but other than that this isn't exactly a genre gem. Better than what came before, for sure, but that's not enough.

Developer

Bamtang Games

Publisher

GameMill

Genre

Driving

Players

12

C3 Score

Rated $score out of 10  6/10

Reader Score

Rated $score out of 10  0 (0 Votes)

European release date Out now   North America release date Out now   Japan release date Out now   Australian release date Out now   

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