Mantis Burn Racing Review

There's something about top-down racing games that brings back mass feelings of nostalgia. Games from yesteryear that didn't have the graphical capability (or technical know-how) to project a pseudo-3d environment for you to race through gave birth to some iconic titles, such as Super Off Road, Skidmarks and Micro Machines. Mantis Burn Racing is one of the latest to join the fray.

There's been a slew of top-down racers over the recent years, but most seem to boil down to nothing more than clones of mobile games, which has only pushed this genre further away from the mainstream.

Head of VooFoo Studio; Mark Williams is no stranger to this genre either, having developed the excellent Max Rally on the Amiga back in 1998. Citing Mantis Burn Racing as the "game I've wanted to make since I got my first start in the industry". So, no pressure there, Mark.

To get started, I dove into the game's career mode, which has you completing races across seven different seasons. Each race is placed on a visual roadmap of sorts, where completing different course will reward you with different upgrades. Some upgrades will require the completion of multiple connected races in order to unlock. The primary result of a race is to earn 'gears' which you'll use to purchase the upgrades you unlock throughout the career. There's three class of cars available; light, medium and heavy. It's largely left up to you to decide which of the three classes you should use for any given race, however, there are some events that are locked to a specific set, to ensure that you learn the best of what each class has to offer.

There’s also the inclusion of a split-screen mode, so you and three friends can jostle one another on the couch for first place victory, which is a feature that seems to be slowly resigned to the annals of history. However, here it works perfectly and a well timed hand in front of the eyes of your aggressor can mean the difference between winning and losing.

But what’s really key and that makes or breaks a racing game like this, is how well it handles. Controls are simple, with accelerate, brake and steering, with a short boost available occasionally to help in those moments of need. They’re absolutely solid, and with a minimal amount of practice, you can be sliding around corners executing apex-perfect drifts and gaining time advantages over your foes by sneaking through shortcuts with ease.

Graphically, the game is high quality with plenty of variation between the different environments. However, the environments themselves only have a few track layouts available which is a bit of a shame, though there is at least the ability to go around them in reverse which does help with the repetition. In terms of audio, the game sounds rather nice for a top-down racer, with plenty of variation in the engine noises that you’re not just listening to constant red-lining. The music can get a little repetitive, but this isn’t a huge problem as on the whole, the music isn’t an annoying loop and stays in the background quite well.

Overall, it’s great to see a new top-down racer that isn’t just a re-hashed mobile game, and one that handles well to boot. It can be a blast with a few mates on the couch and has a fully fledged campaign that doesn’t resort to just getting three stars per race for when your mates are off doing less fun things.