Review of Avatar Karting

As far as I know there aren't too many kart racing games out on the 360. The few it does have are not considerably good. So does Avatar Karting surpass all hopes and dreams of becoming the biggest karting game on the 360? No, not really, but it is still a solid kart game that you can play for only a dollar. It also includes avatars!

Avatar Karting is a pretty basic game. It includes a single player area that lets the player race with seven other A.I. controlled racers. Single race, series mode, and a time trial lets the player choose what they would like to do. Along with that they can choose the color of the kart, the flag that they represent (USA, Germany, etc.) and some options about the brakes and the steering. It also contains sixteen different tracks to race on. Most of this is also included in the multiplayer, which features up to eight players and a consistent scoring system that seems to follow the player for his entire career of Avatar Karting.

I decided to team up with my legendary friend thepwnboss and jump straight into the multiplayer. When we first got on there was only one game going with about five people in it. We weren't able to join them but we noticed they had an absurd ping rate of like 63,000 or something. So we just played against each other for a while. The game is simple with right trigger for gas and left trigger for brakes. You also have a constant charging turbo power that you use by pressing the A button. That's pretty much it. There are no power-ups to pick up or traps to watch out for. The game does okay for itself even with such simple concepts. Periodically we would have another player join us (and somehow they were always super fast compared to us). While we hosted the game everything was fine. Eventually thepwnboss and I tried to join another game that popped up and we were able to play with about four other people. For the most part the game ran smooth and we didn't have any issues. Afterward I did a couple single player races. The A.I. is okay but they were rather easy after facing opponents online. There is a feature in single player races where if you hold the left bumper you can rewind time. This is useful if you make a mistake or crash into another vehicle.

There really isn't too much special about Avatar Karting. All the tracks look similar except for a few lighting differences. It seems like the same song is playing throughout the whole game too, of course you could always turn it off. But the game really doesn't do anything bad, it just doesn't do anything special. Still, for only a dollar this might satisfy your racing craving long enough to find something else.

I give Avatar Karting a 2/4.