TNT Racers: Nitro Machines Edition (Wii U) Review

The main gameplay mechanic of this game is quite unusual for a racing game, as it's not all about reaching the finish line first. Instead, it's about staying alive while fighting with the other racers using over a dozen power-ups. The tracks are viewed from an isometric perspective and the camera is focused on the leading driver, meaning that anyone that's falling behind and goes off camera will crash their car. The same also happens to drivers that are pushed off the course or take too much damage from power-ups. Eliminated players aren't completely out of the game, though. Shadow Mode allows them to re-enter the race as a shadow and disrupt the remaining players with power-ups. Once only one racer remains, everybody gets revived and a new part of the race starts at the same location.

The game features four types of race modes: Knock-Out, Score, Lap and Time. The Knock-Out Mode is all about eliminating the other drivers and points are given for each place, with the most being awarded to the winner of the round. The overall victor is whoever reaches a set amount of Knock-Out points first. Then, there's Score Mode in which players need to amass a certain amount of points by using power-ups, staying in the race and collecting various coins placed on the track. Lap Mode and Time Mode are more or less variations of Score Mode as they have slightly different rules. The goal is still to collect as many points as possible but this time the winner is whoever has the most points after a certain amount of laps or a certain amount of time has passed.

The Single Player content mainly consists of the Tournament Mode and the Career Mode. Tournaments are sets of three races with additional options for driving speed and AI difficulty but the main appeal lies in the challenges found in Career Mode. There are a total of 75 challenges spread across five difficulties. While each one features 15 challenges, it's only required to complete the 8th challenge of each difficulty in order to unlock the next one. The types of races are fairly varied consisting of Knock-Out, Score, Lap, Time and Time Attack. Time Attack challenges can also feature some slight twists by requiring the player to hit a certain number of objects across the track or placing sets of mines on the track that have to be avoided.

Normal challenges are fairly easy and ideal to get used to the game while Fast challenges increase the driving speed and offer a good challenge. Turbo challenges drastically increase the driving speed and this is where the game starts to become quite difficult. Drift challenges retain the crazy speed but make all tracks very slippery, making it extremely hard to steer around corners. This would be a good challenge if it was solely about solo Time Attack races but having many races with other cars on the track that have the goal to mess everything up makes it very frustrating to play. Managing to somehow pass those challenges unlocks the Formula TNT challenges and they are near impossible, raising the driving speed to truly insane levels.

There are 26 tracks and 16 cars to unlock. It doesn't take very long to unlock everything, though. It should also be mentioned that all the cars handle exactly the same and the differences are merely cosmetic just like the option to pick one of eight colours for each car. That said, standing out from the other racers is crucial in this game, as it can be rather easy to lose sight of one's car in the midst of all the chaos. The game also features Off-TV play and local multiplayer that supports the Wii U GamePad, Wii U Pro Controller, Wii Remote plus Nunchuck and Wii Remote alone.