Pocketbike Racer Review (ign.com)
- ign.com -
November 17, 2006 - Note: This is one in a series of three promotional games being put out by Burger King and Microsoft. They are only available from November 19 through December 24 and can be bought for $3.99 USD with the purchase of a value meal. As such, they won't be reviewed as major releases but will be taken in the context of what they are, extreme budget titles.
In the vast sea of Mario Kart clones, Pocketbike racer is the only one that allows you to race as a giant chicken, the Burger King mascot, or Brooke Burke. That is about all that Pocketbike Racer has going for it. This game suffers from uninspired track design, generic modes and a limited number of power-ups. Nobody was really expecting much out of this game, but when the online multiplayer game gets boring after just a couple of matches, it failed to meet even the low expectations.
Pocketbike Racer has five tracks to choose from that range from short loops to longer jump and ramp filled courses. Each course is filled with gates that fill up your power gauge when you cross through them. This power gauge can be used as a turbo boost or for firing weapons. The more you fill up the gauge, the longer you can use your turbo or the more powerful weapon you'll have access to. There's nothing outstanding in the course or weapon design, so the only thing to keep you interested is the novelty of playing as a giant hamburger. That stays fun for about an hour at most. Seriously, who was the marketing guy that decided how the in-game advertising would be done? Why are we shooting rockets and lightning bolts at each other instead of something more hilarious? Using a chicken fry machine gun or dropping shakes to use as oil slicks would be much more enjoyable than these boring weapons.
There are five different modes to play. The standard one is just a race to see who can finish the requisite number of laps in the fastest time. The slight variant on this is the time trial. You can probably guess how it plays. Cone trial is a race to see which player can make it through a certain number of cone gates first. The only interesting part about his mode is that you can go either direction around the track, allowing for a little bit of strategy. Battle royale is the standard death match style game that every kart game has. There aren't any specific maps for this mode and it ends up being boring when you're put on a course that was designed for a race. The last mode is called hardcore, but it should be called boring. All of the gates and powerups are removed, so the little bit of fun you could have shooting other people or turbo blasting off of jumps is gone. You can play all of these races in tournament mode to unlock new bikes and other tournaments. You know, for fun or something.
November 17, 2006 - Note: This is one in a series of three promotional games being put out by Burger King and Microsoft. They are only available from November 19 through December 24 and can be bought for $3.99 USD with the purchase of a value meal. As such, they won't be reviewed as major releases but will be taken in the context of what they are, extreme budget titles.
In the vast sea of Mario Kart clones, Pocketbike racer is the only one that allows you to race as a giant chicken, the Burger King mascot, or Brooke Burke. That is about all that Pocketbike Racer has going for it. This game suffers from uninspired track design, generic modes and a limited number of power-ups. Nobody was really expecting much out of this game, but when the online multiplayer game gets boring after just a couple of matches, it failed to meet even the low expectations.
Pocketbike Racer has five tracks to choose from that range from short loops to longer jump and ramp filled courses. Each course is filled with gates that fill up your power gauge when you cross through them. This power gauge can be used as a turbo boost or for firing weapons. The more you fill up the gauge, the longer you can use your turbo or the more powerful weapon you'll have access to. There's nothing outstanding in the course or weapon design, so the only thing to keep you interested is the novelty of playing as a giant hamburger. That stays fun for about an hour at most. Seriously, who was the marketing guy that decided how the in-game advertising would be done? Why are we shooting rockets and lightning bolts at each other instead of something more hilarious? Using a chicken fry machine gun or dropping shakes to use as oil slicks would be much more enjoyable than these boring weapons.
There are five different modes to play. The standard one is just a race to see who can finish the requisite number of laps in the fastest time. The slight variant on this is the time trial. You can probably guess how it plays. Cone trial is a race to see which player can make it through a certain number of cone gates first. The only interesting part about his mode is that you can go either direction around the track, allowing for a little bit of strategy. Battle royale is the standard death match style game that every kart game has. There aren't any specific maps for this mode and it ends up being boring when you're put on a course that was designed for a race. The last mode is called hardcore, but it should be called boring. All of the gates and powerups are removed, so the little bit of fun you could have shooting other people or turbo blasting off of jumps is gone. You can play all of these races in tournament mode to unlock new bikes and other tournaments. You know, for fun or something.
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Like Big Bumpin', Pocketbike Racer has a character creation mode that stinks. It doesn't matter much since the biggest draw of this game is the goofy characters. You probably won't want to make your own character anyways.
There are modes for multiplayer gaming that do add a little to the playability. You can play with four players on a split screen offline or with up to eight through Xbox Live. There wasn't any noticeable lag in the matches we played and the voice chat worked fine.
There are a million Mario Kart clones and Pocketbike Racer doesn't do anything unique or fun enough to make it worth playing over any of the rest. Sure, it's dirt cheap and the novelty of playing as the King is there. Plus you get some goofy achievement points for your gamer card that are nice for showing off. The game is just so generic and doesn't even manage to use the Burger King license to its utmost to get some humor in there. Unless you have to have all three Burger King games, you can skip out on this one.
There are modes for multiplayer gaming that do add a little to the playability. You can play with four players on a split screen offline or with up to eight through Xbox Live. There wasn't any noticeable lag in the matches we played and the voice chat worked fine.
There are a million Mario Kart clones and Pocketbike Racer doesn't do anything unique or fun enough to make it worth playing over any of the rest. Sure, it's dirt cheap and the novelty of playing as the King is there. Plus you get some goofy achievement points for your gamer card that are nice for showing off. The game is just so generic and doesn't even manage to use the Burger King license to its utmost to get some humor in there. Unless you have to have all three Burger King games, you can skip out on this one.
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