Mantis Burn Racing Reviews
Mantis Burn Racing is a solid overhead racer that unfortunately lacks visual variety and substantial lasting appeal.
Mantis Burn Racing is a fun racing game that throws out the simulation of modern driving titles, instead opting for the high speed, sand-kicking arcade racer. With nine cars ranging from light, medium, and heavy cars to choose from, players can compete against the AI or online to prove who is king of the racetrack. With a few different events to select from that vary in difficulty, and a host of tracks to race in, this is definitely one of the more enjoyable racers on PlayStation 4. While riddled with glitches and bugs, none is truly game breaking, and can be tolerated by those who are patient, although it is annoying having to constantly restart the game due to freezes and the like.
Mantis Burn Racing is a decent racing game, albeit rather lean on content. On the bright side, there are plans for a few major updates, which will include more tracks, vehicles, and a greatly expanded career mode. The controls are approachable for anyone with even a casual grasp of racing games. This makes it a good title for pick-up-and-play groups. Just hand someone a controller, and they're ready to go. Although, they might complain that there aren't any blue shells or flaming hoops to jump through. This is a pure arcade-style racer, which is kind of a lost art in this day and age.
So in conclusion has VooFoo built a good top down racing game that stands above most of the recent competition? Yes they have as Mantis Burn Racing looks good, controls good, and has a pretty good amount of content. It needs some more track variety and the load times really dampen the rest of the experience but this is one well built racer outside of that.
It’s about time the genre got the kick up the exhaust it needed and VooFoo Studios has given it just that with Mantis Burn Racing.
Perfectly accessible for friends and family to enjoy, yet also deep and challenge enough to give solo players great value for money.
Mantis Burn Racing is an incredibly frustrating game. An overview of the game reveals a lot of promise thanks to its solid visuals, rewarding upgrade system, and interesting career structure.
Control is smooth, the drifting is satisfying, and in general it looks great. You can enjoy playing against the AI but it is far better to play with friends locally or online and in general I didn't have issues finding people to play against since it is cross-platform to boot. If you're willing to grind through the Career Mode in order to learn the nuances of the controls and unlock everything the game has to offer it does deliver a satisfying payoff, I just wish tastes of it came sooner.
Handling can make or break a racing game, and thankfully the VooFoo development team have got the balance just right, with controls feeling responsive and vehicles behaving just as you’d expect them to
All of that is say that Mantis Burn Racing isn’t bad by any stretch of the imagination. It’s just that with the dozens of others games vying for my attention, I really never felt like I wanted to boot it up. There isn’t that pull to keep you coming back for more. Which is a real shame because there’s some great racing lurking within here and it’s probably the best looking game of its type out there. It just lacks that certain something which makes games of this ilk compelling to play. When you’re actual races are a little bit dull, perhaps it’s time to go back to the drawing board.
Outside of a sub-par soundtrack, Mantis Burn Racing is the finest overhead racer in years.
In the end, Mantis Burn Racing manages to bring effortless controls and a superb handling model, while being an enjoyable skill-focused racer that gets by just fine with its lack of funky weaponry that often features in these top-down racers.
There’s a lot of potential within Mantis Burn Racing, but a lack of content really sells short the fantastic execution. A follow up with more fantastical tracks, and a lot more tracks and vehicles baked in would really be a treat, but I can’t recommend the game right now.
All in all, if you’re looking for a fun pick-up-and-play game that’s easy to race a round or two and then move on, Mantis Burn Racing might be for you. If you like driving games which offer you the option to tune your machine to the way you like your car to handle, MBR has a promising system to allow you to do just that.
Even though there are flaws in the multiplayer offering, the single player mode gives more than enough bang for your buck. Pixel-perfect control, fast action, and plenty of events to take part in mean that Mantis Burn Racing isn’t far away from arcade racing perfection.
Mantis Burn Racing is a game that has nothing to envy to the rest of similar titles. The amount of content that the game includes, the level of detail and its fantastic execution makes us forget about small problems like the sound effects.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
It could benefit from some more tracks (as well as more environments), but Mantis Burn Racing offers simple-to-play racing entertainment across a range of events. With plenty of ways to upgrade your vehicles, they can be customised to your liking as you take on the various challenges the game throws at you. Regular racing is fun, but so are the other events, particularly the battle ones as you race around trying to outrun the hail of bullets or perhaps purposely drop behind to take out your tormentor. As enjoyable as these modes are in single player, they work even better against other people and on Switch there are a number of ways to get your multiplayer fix. Online competition is a welcome inclusion, but the local modes add immensely to the appeal. It's not quite "Game Boy and Tetris", but "Switch and Mantis Burn Racing" fit together well thanks to quick racing thrills and the options provided by an undocked console. If you're looking for some more multiplayer racing action then Mantis Burn Racing is an excellent choice, and yet another must-have title for Nintendo's hybrid console.
With great multiplayer and a wealth of singleplayer content, this is a game that will keep you coming back for a long time to come.
Featuring an immense amount of content, a fun and challenging driving mechanic and lots of visual appeal, this game will certainly find its place in the Nintendo Switch catalog, despite a feeling of mid-term repetitiveness and the need to return to previous tracks to obtain more credits.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Mantis Burn Racing excels in being a casual and accessible racer for newcomers with excellent and responsive controls while offering a robust and challenging career mode for the hardcore.