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A decent Karting Sim, but a premium pay-to-win one | Full Review - Street Kart Racing

1K View2023-04-26

Street Kart Racing

8.2

Fast-pacedExciting

Get

Street Kart Racing is a racing-sim featuring Go-Karts, real life racing superstars, and real life tracks to play in. It’s focus is realism over arcade racing, with the no nonsense catchphrase “No Assist, No Excuses”.

🟩Pros

+Realistic driving physics

+Photorealistic visuals

+Real life tracks

🟥Cons

-P2W mechanics on top of being a paid game

-Minor technical bugs

Photorealistic visuals

First of all, the graphics look impressive for what they're trying to do. I went in with this game blind and was not expecting to play a realistic sim-game with photorealistic graphics that value true realism over high definition textures or pretty lighting. The colors are just done right and captures that dull real-life “boring” color palettes.

Starting the game, I was welcomed by real life racing superstar Nico Rosberg and a tutorial section which got me up to speed with the controls and how the game works. The game is just a simple no nonsense racing game; accelerate, turn corners, and get ahead of the competition to win races.

Realistic driving physics

While the controls are pretty straightforward, winning actual races is hard. Cornering is tough, and you can easily spin the kart out of control if you’re not careful. It’s not all unforgiving though, as you can easily call a marshall to “reset the vehicle” if you somehow mess up and get stuck. Instead of being hyper realistic with this, it now just takes you a few seconds to reset and get back into the race. When you’re ahead by a huge margin, this won’t even let opponents catch you.

I did experience some collision/clipping issues where I bumped a wall and went straight right through it on multiple occasions, and some minor sound issues where the engine sounded a bit muted than expected. Despite featuring real human beings, especially real race superstars, their various different cut-outs guiding you throughout the gameplay systems felt a bit cheap.

Various control schemes

There are various control schemes to use: pure touchscreen, using the phone’s gyro controls like a steering wheel, inverted touch controls, and even the option to use physical controllers like the PS4 and Xbox types. Personally, I selected the Tilt (Pro) as it is the recommended one, to get an immersive feeling of having to use a steering wheel.

Using the tilt setting, the handling is actually done really well and feels like a real Go-Kart driving experience. You can tune the karts handling to fit your preferences; steering, braking strength, tire pressure, these aspect are simulated in the game. Albeit some of the fine tuning are locked behind higher level Kart Mechanics so they’re not initially accessible.

Real-life tracks and real-time weather

Street Kart Racing also features real-life tracks, with real-time weather supposedly matching their real life counterparts. As expected, the weather will affect the handling and driving of the Karts, adding a lot of immersion to the driving-sim experience.

The whole gameplay loop if the game is to win races, therefore gaining currency when the event ends after real-time hours or minutes. Then proceeding to enter new classes and more expensive and faster Karts. While it is multiplayer focused, the majority of my time was spent racing with AI which are always readily available to match up against. Only the lap and times matter, and that will get compared to other players in an asynchronous multiplayer setup.

P2W mechanics on top of being a paid game

Street Kart Racing costs $5, so I’m a bit surprised that they still included a limiting energy system for play, as well as in-app purchases not just for the cosmetics, but also to act as a pay-to-win element to speed things up. It’s bound to alienate many players, and rightfully so, P2W mechanics on top of being a paid game is just an unacceptable model these days.

Conclusion:

Street Kart Racing is an impressive Kart Racing game because of its realistic driving physics, visuals, and overall simulated feel. However, its premium P2W model hurts the overall progression of the game, and is not very enticing for players looking to get their money’s worth. Still, if you're looking for a genuine Kart Racing-sim on iOS, this might be worth a try.

Mentioned games

Street Kart Racing

8.2

Fast-pacedExciting

Get

Actually a realistic Kart Racing game for a change | First Impressions - Street Kart Racing

Street Kart Racing is not your typical Kart Racing game, it doesn’t feature arcade controls, power-ups, whimsical characters, and third person camera. Instead, it is a racing-sim in the likes of Gran Turismo or Assetto Corsa. That means first-person driving camera, realistic driving physics, photorealistic visuals, and pure racing gameplay. Starting the game, I was welcomed by real life racing superstar Nico Rosberg and a tutorial section which got me up to speed with the controls and how the game works. The game is just a simple no nonsense racing game; accelerate, turn corners, and get ahead of the competition to win races.

lyndonguitar9472023-04-26