Krazy Kart Racing is considered to be a passable (if not more) kart racer for the iPhone, how does this next one fare?

Shrek Kart ($4.99)

Electronic Arts can flaunt its realistic racing games, and Gameloft can whip up trailers of their upcoming racing games. But what we really needed on this platform was a racing game that had something like…

Ogres and talking Donkey’s in it. Funny enough that’s exactly what Shrek Kart is!

My Take

Shrek Kart is what I expected from a kart racer from the start, and fills up the gaps I found in Krazy Kart and Crash Bandicoot. I believe the graphics are better than the other games and the gameplay has been set out to have a much longer lasting appeal than the other games. Seeing all other kart games (except Cocoto Kart Online) selling way above Shrek Kart’s opening price, it’s surprising how Shrek Kart comes out on top of all the games.

I found this game very fun and rewarding to play. The game was very smooth and easy to play, even if the racing had a rubberband effect (if you got too far in front and made a mistake you are suddenly caught up to by all other racers).

As I have already said this game will take a long time to complete if you want to unlock all the characters as it involves completing all game modes instead of just the championship mode like most games. While there are better racing games out there I found this one to be very fun and great for more casual play.

Presentation

Instead of having basic and boring items as the scenery Gameloft has implemented the world of Shrek with well known places such as the Swamp and the streets of Far Far Away. I think this is a great move on their behalf because it makes the game play and look more like a real Shrek game.

There are 10 unique characters from the movie including Shrek, Fiona, Donkey, Gingy, Three Little Pigs, Three Ogre Babies and many more. Each of the characters has their unique kart which looks great. For example Gingy has a kart made out of gingerbread and the Ogre Babies have a pram. These look great and having characters you can recognize and name is a big advantage in selling a game like this.

I found Shrek Kart to be extremely smooth and I encountered no lag or glitches what so ever when racing on a 1st Gen iPod Touch. The only lag I found was when it was previewing the track, which worried me. Luckily though after you watched or skipped the track preview the game was fine for me.

Controls

The controls in this game are fairly basic and limited in the amount of customization. The game is auto-accelerate and the options for steering can either be accelerator or touch screen. The accelerator is fine for this game and is very easy to use without having any troubles, unless your a very bad driver of course.

For the more advanced drives you can implement some special driving skills. One of these is knowing to jump when someone has targeted you with a power-up. To do this you tap the screen but I generally tapped like crazy until it stopped… but that didn’t seem to work very well for me. The other groovy skill is drifting around corners by pressing the red button. Drifting for long enough gives you a nice boost of speed at the end. Gameloft has improved drifting HEAPS AND HEAPS since the days of the now very very annoying Asphalt 4 drifting. Hopefully this shows that drifting will be at least manageable in Asphalt 5.

Finally you have special power-ups you can use. Each driver has their unique power-up which is with you all the time but requires 45 seconds to repower after each use. This is activated by tapping a button. The other type of power-up are ones that you collect by running into boxes. These can be used straight away by tapping another button. You can collect another one only if you have no power-up in line to be used.

Gameplay

There are four modes. First up is the tournament mode. In this there are five or so tournaments that require you to get points for finishing races and getting first place overall to win the tournament. There are about 4 locations in each tournament and multiple races which are split into little rounds within the tournament. In this mode you can play through and try to win the championship cup with any driver but you have the progress saved for each driver. What I mean by that is if you finish the first tournament with Shrek you can’t continue onto the second tournament with Donkey. Finishing the tournament with just one character unlocks Fiona.

Next up is a single race where you have to come first in all 13 races with a driver to unlock another character. This can be completed in any difficulty and the only reason I would really use this mode is to practice a track or to unlock the new character.

Next up is what is probably the most difficult mode with the challenge mode. This requires you to finish multiple challenges on each of the 13 race tracks. For example one challenge is to collect so many boxes, one is to avoid boxes and a full on time trial to beat a time. This mode gets a bit dry after a while and probably wont be used again after unlocking the character.

Finally is Arena mode where you try to smash around a circular track blowing up other drivers while avoiding to be hit yourself. This is quite fun but extremely hard as they seem to pick on you quite a bit. Just trying all three arenas unlocks another character. After unlocking all characters you also get a special character, the ghost of Lord Farquad.

Conclusion

Shrek Kart is an extremely strong racing game that performs well on this device. With a smooth race the entire way this is a game you should definitely recommend getting. You are dragged into completing all game modes and will take hours upon hours to complete.

While it doesn’t have the local multiplayer that Cocoto has, it still has WiFi multiplayer. $4.99 is a very respectable price for old Shrek so… Shrek On!