🏎️🏁 Mini Motor Racing X | Review | Switch | "I Am On a Personal Quest To Find The Perfect Top-Down Racer" 🏎️🏁 @TheBinaryMill #GameDev #IndieGames

Mini Motor Racing X

Nintendo Switch

The Binary Mill

A wonderfully playable game that is packed with content and some really neat touches but feels subtly tarnished by its mobile roots.

As longtime readers will know, I am on a personal quest to find the perfect top-down racer. There have been many contestants but games such as Mashed and Wrecked still hold the top spot in my heart. 

Whilst some are fundamentally flawed - such as the controls and physics in Tiny Racer - most are decent but lack the punch to really shake the genre. I’m pleased to say that Mini Motor Racing X is a very solid and fun experience, especially in multiplayer!

With an uber-smooth frame rate of 60fps, the game is a visual joy with the cartoonish vehicles being designed with a huge amount of colours and patterns that MAY call to mind some famous franchises from throughout the decades. 

The music, whilst being pretty forgettable and generic, isn’t overbearing and so I was content to keep it chirping along in the background during the brief, manic races.

There are a LOT of modes here. Single and multiplayer career modes (awesome) alongside a weapon-based mode, a mini Rocket League-Esque football game and up to four-player local multiplayer with more available online.

The cash earned through the races can be spent on upgrading the many vehicles in terms of the usual top speed, handling, acceleration and boost. What I would really like to mention as well, is the ability to switch between cameras.

The camera system in the game completely makes this a winner in my eyes. In single-player, you can flick between typical the top-down/isomeric viewpoint to a first-person through to third, this is a really saucy touch as it effectively changes the genre of the game in a subtle way, opening it up to players who prefer their action close-up or viewed from above - other versions outside the Switch also allow the use of VR, which I can imagine is full-on! - very cool stuff.

Well, with all this solid gold, why does the games mobile roots feel a bit of a shame? 

Well, it’s all down to progress through the myriad stages in the career mode. The game is built on the grind. Unless you re-race a lot to build up your cash and buy upgrades, your car simply won’t be a contender in the later races and it feels cheap. 

The SECOND everyone pulled away from me and left me lurching around behind, no matter how cleanly I went around the track or how wisely I used my boosts just felt a shame, it made the career mode something I felt I had to buy my way through instead of relying on skill. The whole game is presented as one of fun and accessibility so it’s slightly jarring that there’s this mobile-game grind sensibility there.

That aside, Mini Motor Racing X is a great title that I can imagine will get some serious time put in by lovers of cartoony arcade racing games and whilst I may not spend too much time on the single-player stuff, I’ll definitely be popping this on - alongside Hotshot Racers - the next time friends are over.

Right, I’m off to get into my Scooby-Doo Van.

❄️ RATING: ICE COOL ❄️

Ratings Explained

ICE COOL (Great Game Recommended)

MELTING (Recommended with reservations, one to consider if you are a fan of the genre)

MELTED (Not A Recommended Purchase)