Nickelodeon Kart Racers 3: Slime Speedway Review

Nickelodeon Kart Racers 3: Slime Speedway is a kart racing game akin to Mario Kart but with its own twists and perks. While on the surface, it seems pretty simplistic, this alternative offers a unique perspective on it. Given that kart racers are few and far between on Xbox platforms, is Nickelodeon Kart Racers 3: Slime Speedway worth your time and money?

Nickelodeon Kart Racers 3: Slime Speedway is a typical kart racer where you can select from a handful of game mode: Slime Scramble (the game’s championship mode), Free Race, Time Trial, Challenges and Arena. While you do need to chose a kart or bike and your character, you can also select a handful of perks for the race, such as support characters that will either grab coins, or give you a temporary boost for example, among other perks.

Not only that but you also choose a Crew Engineer that will provide additional offense such as rotating claws or get a quick boost after a projectile hits an other racer. There are also defensive mechanics such replacing an item box with a gnome or Invincibility on slime slides. Note that these are just a handful of offensive and defensive perks as there’s a decent amount available out of the gate and you can unlock as you progress through the championship mode.

Similarly to Mario Kart, picking up coins, or Slime Tokens, will give you additional speed and you can carry up to 10. There are also power ups to annoy your fellow racers such as a bouncing ball or, one of the best, a giant hand appears in the middle of the screen blocking your view temporarily.

The game also a plethora of tracks and characters to play with and as you progress through the game, you can unlock new characters, so that’s different from typical microtransaction shenanigans. Tracks are quite challenging and unique. Sometime you’ll be able to take a different path and jump into a Slime Slide where speed is increased and you need to jump over bumps. Speaking of which, you can also drift around the tracks.

Not everything is perfect with the latest racer in the Nickelodeon Kart Racers series. The first nuisance is the constant yapping of your character when going around the tracks; repetitive one-liners are funny at first, but after hearing them multiple times in a single race, it gets old fast. Additionally, the game has no sense of speed. At all. Even on the Fast setting, it feels slower than Mario Kart’s 50cc mode.

The game looks great; each character is designed faithfully to their cartoon counterparts. And given this is inspired from kids’ shows, the race tracks are diverse and highly colorful; it’s impossible to play and not smile, whether you’re a young one playing now being able to play as your favorite Nickelodeon character or an old school gamer who wished they could’ve gotten a similarly experience as a kid. The soundtrack is fine; nothing really noteworthy. As mentioned, the characters’ one liners are ok, but get old and annoying quite fast, but the voice work sound accurate (please note that I never watched Nickelodeon as we don’t have that channel here, but relied on hearing quips here and there).

Nickelodeon Kart Racers 3: Slime Speedway is hands down one of the best racers I’ve had the opportunity to play and it’s a great kart racer for those looking to fill that Mario Kart void on Xbox consoles. A hefty selection of characters, tracks and a handful of game modes will keep players of all ages busy. Although, older gamers might notice that even on Fast mode, there’s little to no speeding effect and one liners get annoying. For the former, you get used to it and for the latter, simply turn off the volume. Other than that, you can’t go wrong this light kart racing game.