Mantis Burn Racing Review

Mantis Burn Racing is a solid playing top-down racer let down by rather generic presentation and a lack of tracks.

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Has top-down racing burned out?

Mantis Burn Racing is a return to old-school, Micro-Machines style top-down racing, a genre that’s all but dead. Is this indie racer enough to breathe life into the once-popular genre?

Gameplay:

MBR certainly plays, in the default isometric view, a fair bit like the 90’s racers it’s so clearly inspired by, although the use of 3D models allows for a number of different camera angles to suit the way you want to play.

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The handling is actually quite impressive, as you quickly get up to speed with pulling off lengthy drifts with aplomb. There’s also a rock/paper/scissors style approach to the different vehicles, with the heavier ones able to reach high speeds on straights and bash through road-blocks to create shortcuts, whilst the more nimble vehicles quickly reach a top speed but corner and accelerate with greater ease. It works well, and many of the races allow you the car of your choice.

There’s also a neat little upgrade path to each vehicle, with wins in the career mode opening up new upgrade parts. You can use these as you like, so if you want to add 10 gearbox parts to your buggy rather than upgrading the nitro or engine, that’s totally fine. It’s a cool level of customisation that I wish went further in other areas of the game.

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The career certainly has plenty to do, but the second and third-level cars just don’t feel differentiated or fast enough to be worth unlocking, whilst the lack of tracks makes the career start to feel very samey after only 2-3 hours. There’s certainly more to do after this point, but you will have seen everything the game has to offer by that point. All you’ll get is more parts and more similar looking and handling vehicles – all of the race variants are also unlocked quickly.

Multiplayer:

The game features both local and online multiplayer, but I rarely found games available online, and they generally only had 1-2 other human players involved. The lack of weapons don’t give the game any favours, but dicking over your friends in micro machines always had a certain charm to it which this game loses due to the more race-heavy focus.

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Presentation:

MBR looks nice and crisp, but is very generic in terms of the art style. There’s also only two environments – a dusty wasteland and a road circuit next to a marina, each of which host 4 different tracks. The cars themselves are forgettable, and the visual customisation options limited. Engine noises sound whiny, and the couple of music tracks just loop endlessly in the background to the point of distraction.

Conclusion:

Mantis Burn Racing really suffers from having a generic look and only two environments. The core racing is fun, but you can’t help but tire of the game before you would otherwise with the limited number of tracks. Online multiplayer helps, but games seem to be so infrequent as to be unreliable.

With more money and time, a sequel to the game could be genuinely fantastic, but right now, the already modest price asked seems a bit much for what’s on offer here.

Good

  • Good handling
  • Vehicle upgrades

Bad

  • Generic presentation
  • Too few tracks and environments
7

Good

Graphics - 7
Sound - 6.5
Multiplayer - 7
Gameplay - 8
Value - 6.5
Editor - Reviewer GamerKnights

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