Mantis Burn Racing

[HandsomeDead]

So this is a top down racing game.  That's the nutshell at least.  I saw that trailer for it a while back and just from looking at it I got a strong impression that it had some nice handling in it.  And it does.  It's like I have a sixth sense or something.

 

But to be honest, apart from the handling and general act of racing the game has some frustrating things about it.

 

So how the career mode works in MBR is you have a path to work through with it splitting off from time to time so you can get extra money, xp and "gears".  Gears are obtained by doing special little missions in a race like "drift for so many metres in total" and "beat a lap in xx:xx time".  There's actually quite a lot of them and do add a little pressure to the races.  You then use the gears to unlock further races.  The progress actually reminds me a lot of 2D Mario games; especially the "New" series if you think of the gears as the big coins.

The way its done isn't too bad but since there are a limited amount of tracks, at least a lot less than there are events, you play the same tracks a lot.  They are very good tracks, but they certainly could be placed in the progression in a way that makes the number of tracks seem less limited.

 

What also is limited is the amount of vehicles.  There are three in each speed class: one light, one medium and one heavy and you have to buy these with the money you've earned, and you need all three as some races require a specific weight class so I don't know why they just don't have them selectable instead of going through this buying process that doesn't add anything.  It's not like you have multiple cars in each weight class to commit to.  Well, there are others but they are in their own speed class and have their own races.

Also, the upgrade system is as clear as mud.  You get upgrades to engine, tyre, gearbox, etc and they are like consumables and they seem to be finite and when you remove one it is gone forever.  It also isn't clear if it upgrades your vehicle.  Like you can use it and find it has no effect.  I dunno, I could be being an idiot but it kinda sucks.  I also don't think the upgrades that do work even affect the performance much.

 

But apart from the puzzling stuff in the menus the racing itself is really damn good.

 

It has some really nice drift mechanics.  When I think of Wipeout I think of how cornering is like smoothly carving the apex and this has that too; it's just as satisfying.  And I think the perspective benefits it too since you can see more of the track (more specifically what is coming next to the side because of how they are laid out) the game can run faster.  It's like a Scalextric track in that there are a lot of u-turns you can speed around nearly at top speed.  It feels really good, especially in the lightweight buggies.

 

The tracks as a whole are so good.  They group a lot of u-turns together pretty often and there are a lot of angular turns that make me think of F-Zero on the SNES or any Mode 7 racing game except much more elaborate in that they often loop back and cross over themselves.  The only thing that catches me out sometimes is because of the top down view seeing ramps and other gradients that affect handling can be hard to see until you're familiar with the tracks.

 

I've been hankering for a good drift-y racer for a while and this is actually doing a pretty good job of satiating that.  Thumbs up.