Renzo Racer leaves a lot to be desired, with a multitude of issues covering everything from physics glitches through to the core racing gameplay.
Making a good kart racer is harder than it looks. Mario Kart has had what is effectively a monopoly on truly top tier cartoonish racing since the 1990s, even though there have been occasional challengers that have come close. The latest game trying to get in on the action is Renzo Racer.
Renzo Racer is a new kart racer from developer EnsenaSoft. After spending some time in early access, the title is now heading out into the open, looking to cover off kart racing for the PC masses. Unfortunately, Renzo Racer has its fair share of problems.
Kart racers can fail for many reasons. Since such games rely heavily on charm and character, it might be that a lack of strong characters holds back a title from really grabbing the player. Equally, there may be some serious issues from a gameplay perspective, as seen with Nickelodeon Kart Racers. When it comes to Renzo Racer, its flaws are down in the sheer bones of the game.
Quite simply, Renzo Racer is not very much fun to play. Whereas Crash Team Racing had bundles of thrills and an innocent glee to its bubbly racing before the inevitable addition of insidious microtransactions, Renzo Racer never grabs the player in that way. Instead, Renzo Racer struggles out of the gate quite literally with sluggish speed and stilted, awkward handling.
One of the best qualities of a kart racer is to offer up short and sweet bursts of fun through a mixture of bubblegum joy and the sharpness of an adrenaline shot. Even at the start of a race Renzo Racer has its problems, with racers slowly getting up to top speed and then falling in line behind one another. There’s chaos to be found, but often this comes from unexpected and unintentional places.
In part this is down to the AI drivers themselves, who can be seen to make some bizarre decisions. Often the player will lap another driver who has become stuck against the wall of the track, and is struggling to make it back on course. At the very least, though, this balances out some of the surprisingly unfair power-ups that Renzo Racer includes, such as one that simply and unceremoniously dumps the driver further down the pack through sheer luck of the draw.
Players will suffer from the curse of getting stuck on walls, too. Occasionally a bump might send the player onto their side, rammed against the edge of the track and unable to move forward. Equally, there are moments where a tiny piece of debris from a bit of destructible environment will send the racer flying out of control and up in the air, only to return to the ground in a position where a reset to the center of the track is needed.
This issue with the wider physics of Renzo Racer is perhaps the thing that makes it the most strange to play. Its environments feel like they are floating in place, missing that sturdy feeling that a high quality racer needs to immerse the player in their experience. Meanwhile, Renzo Racer’s objects appear to come in two categories: immovable or able to fly away at a moment’s notice.
Most of the time, getting stuck while driving will result in eventually being teleported back and being able to continue going. However, there are moments where this functionality fails outright, with the player seemingly permanently rooted in place or (even worse) sent on an ambling journey backwards, having lost any agency over the direction of their vehicle altogether. Luckily, the player does have the option to manually reset themselves, but it's awkward that the option is required at all.
These gameplay issues are really what undermines the experience of Renzo Racer, although the title doesn’t really shine anywhere. Its characters are a cast of animals who are extreme fans of alliteration, such as Pepe Porcupine and Lenny Lizard, and there’s nothing truly interesting about any of their designs. That said, it’s still competent enough, even if it’s nothing to write home about.
The circuits, too, are fine, and there’s a good variety here. The best kart racers manage to tap into the feeling of a theme park, with the circuits acting as different rides, and Renzo Racer does provide this through tracks that take players from a candy land through to pirate islands. Some do look extremely close to the designs of other kart racers, though, such as a track that shares more than a glancing resemblance to Mario Kart’s iconic Rainbow Road.
Neither its characters nor its circuits are enough to save Renzo Racer. There are some fundamental flaws in the way the game plays, and these are impossible to overcome for even the most endearing of casts. As such, it’s unlikely that Renzo Racer is going to be much of a home for anyone.
Renzo Racer is available now. Screen Rant was provided with a PC download code for the purposes of this review.