Cartoon Network Racing review (DS)

Collecting the gold coin on each track, winning races, and placing in the top three in championships earn you money, which can be spent in the Toon-Up Shop. Here you can buy new drivers, get new rides for the faster kart series, and unlock minigames and even cartoons. One of the minigames is a lame curling knockoff, but the other one, sketchbook, is pretty neat. You're shown a basic drawing of one of the Cartoon Network characters and then given a short amount of time to draw over it as best you can. When you achieve 75 percent accuracy, you earn points for whatever time is left on the clock, and then it's off to draw another character. It would have been nice to be able to finish and save the drawings, but for a minigame it's a lot of fun. There are three cartoons that can be unlocked as well, and though it will take a substantial time commitment to unlock them all, they're a nice bonus.

Even kids won't find much to enjoy when it comes to Cartoon Network Racing's visuals. The touch screen is used only as an overhead map, which other than for showing shortcuts isn't very useful. The karts are simple looking and don't feature a whole lot of detail. Neither do the tracks they'll be racing on. There's nothing wrong with the overall design, but there's hardly any detail to the courses, and what the developer is trying to pass off as "cartoon-style" visuals by using bright colors and then slapping black lines around poorly textured objects just doesn't cut it. If all of this skimping on the visuals paid off with a speedy frame rate that would be one thing, but of course it doesn't. At its best the frame rate is almost smooth, but even then it doesn't convey any sense of speed. At its worst the game is almost unplayable, and things move as if they're in slow motion. The sound effects aren't great, either. You'll hear a few catchphrases here and there, but most everything is drowned out by the horrible-sounding karts. Thankfully the music is catchy, so you can turn down the effects and crank the tunes.

In the end, Cartoon Network Racing is better than what is usually passed off as a licensed kart racer, but it's certainly no threat to Mario Kart. Younger children who are into any of the kid-friendly shows on Cartoon Network and are more concerned with seeing their favorite characters than they are about great racing will probably have a reasonably good time with the game. Anyone with more discerning racing tastes will probably play the game for a couple of hours, unlock most of the items, and then be done with the game forever.