Nickelodeon Kart Racers 3: Slime Speedway (PlayStation 5) Review

30+ characters have been crammed up here, and it's hard to not appreciate the fact that this will please old and new fans alike, as the roster involves age-old, cult characters like Ren and Stimpy, as well as modern classics the likes of SpongeBob. Yours truly particularly loved the inclusion of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in their '80s look. Add to that plenty of tracks, and tons of customisation for the karts themselves, and you are in for quite the ride. Or are you? Sadly, Nickelodeon Kart Racers 3 is content with being a slightly better version of what came before and nothing more than that.

It's a formulaic kart racer, complete with in-track pick-ups and the like. If you have played any of the other kart racers, familiarity will soon kick in. It's nice and all, and easy to pick up and play, but why pick this and not something else? The only addition to the standard recipe seems to be the titular Slime Speedway, which is a separate path, sort of like a more challenging shortcut, on which one can build up a meter that in turn enables activating an ability. The thing is that most of the time there's little incentive to follow said shortcut, especially in harder difficulties or in the Time Trial mode, as these paths aren't any faster than the original ones. All in all a cool addition, but nothing spectacular.

Variety rather than quality is the name of the game. Said variety ends up being wasted on a game that's not something special, with forgettable tracks, mechanics that feel like a watered down version of better kart racers, and finally a CPU that is frankly not that eager to win. You can play online matches, but good luck finding someone to do that. On the bright side, there are a couple of different modes to try out apart from the Cup Races which are the main dish, with some examples being: Challenge, which has the players completing certain objectives; Demolition, a free-for-all brawl where racers fight each other; and Slime Trails which has you paint the track Splatoon-style, and more. None of these modes will glue you to your seat, but it's nice that they are there.

In the end, like the ones before it, this doesn't have what it takes to be a great kart racer. It's just a nice opportunity for the kiddos, or those who want to be kiddos for a few evenings or so, to have fun with characters from Nickelodeon. It helps a lot that visually it's the best in the series by far - basically a cartoon brought to life. There's not something to point at and call it next-gen, though. It's a title that feels as if it is standing right between the two systems, with the only thing that makes it clear that this runs on a PS5 being the super-fast loading times.