The name says it all... Vroom Kaboom is an vehicular disaster title, a combination of popular modes of play that appear pieced together by the same haphazard parts that decorate its Mad Max-inspired world. Part card-game, driving game, and tower defense, Ratloop Games Canada's debut title embraces its inspirations but fails to add anything new to a crowded space. Instead, it does veritable donuts, going nowhere level after level of cookie-cutter track.

Card games have been around for centuries. Before they became the leading creators of home and handheld consoles, Nintendo was a card game company, selling handmade hanafuda to early gamers in Japan. Vroom Kaboom takes more modern inspiration from Hearthstone, providing players with decks of seemingly badass cars, trucks, and practically anything with wheels. Each car card highlights important and self-explanatory stats including cost, health, damage, and speed. There are two resources that contribute to the ability to play a card: Oil and Firepower. Both generate over time but can also be collected on the "playing field." Oil is used to pay for your average vehicle like a motorcycle or car where Firepower buys you tanks, missiles, and other high-damaging options. It's simple enough, but not explained thoroughly at all; the short tutorial fails to even mention the basic controls.

After the tutorial, players can play offline against bots in a Single Player campaign, quick match, or custom game. Unfortunately there's no way to set an AI's difficulty, leading to some frustratingly easy and impossibly hard matches. The Single Player mode is simple and streamlined; a list of events to participate in that take the player to the next arena. It all feels very "mobile game," lacking a world hub or even some sort of unique UI to stand out among previous entries in the tower defense genre. This get-in-and-play approach might be refreshing if the gameplay felt nearly as fast-paced as the creators believed it to be.

The game has three modes, 1v1, 2v2, and 3v3. Each plays basically the same, save for being able to use multiple decks per round and relying on the experience and skill of teammates. The campaign pits users against AI-controlled opponents with the occasional assistance of AI-controlled allies. But there's never any dialogue shared amongst the warring car tribes. Aside from the voiceover of an announcer, there's no talking at all. It makes what could be a decently engaging experience feel hollow. The soundtrack appeals to the junkyard racing-chiq but is equally uninspired.

Even with a large amount of content, which is something that Vroom Kaboom cannot claim to have, the card-game aspect of the game would appear pretty lackluster. New cards are unlocked via scraps which players receive from - you guessed it - loot boxes. Players are rewarded with loot boxes after playing, similar to Overwatch and PUBG. It's an understandable addition to the game and currently, players are thankfully unable to purchase loot boxes with actual currency.

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Like most card games, decks are set in the beginning of the match, and while there's plenty of strategy in crafting the perfect one for your play-style, it's disappointing to not be able to see your genius play out in a traditional style. Instead, the player is forced into the driver's seat, controlling the car they just "played" in a confusing race to the objective.

The objective in each level, regardless of locale or enemy, is to destroy the opposing team's generators before they destroy yours. The car is placed in the end of your zone and makes its way down a linear track to the generators, picking up resources to fund the use of further cards. On the joyless ride to kamikaze, players can use nitro to speed things up, which appears to be added into the game for the sole reason of decreasing the time players spend actually racing their cars. This would explain why Ratloop refers to the game as a "Tower Defense Collectible Card game," avoiding any mention of the world in which Vroom Kaboom is set: one for fans of cars. And herein lies it's biggest shame: the world is actually quite fun.

Vroom Kaboom has four different factions, each containing its own unique decks and levels. There's the aforementioned Mad Max-apocalyptic junkyard, a Fast-and-Furious muscle car world, a neon-infused futuristic city, and a militaristic/police highway. Players never get to see the characters that make up these worlds, or enjoy any sort of narrative that ties them together. There's a limited character creation tool that corresponds with each faction deck, but the lack of customization or presentation of the final product make the option useless. And aside from the change of scenery, each level follows the same path: a straight line to the generator, playing card after card.

The lack of depth behind Vroom Kaboom's shiny and chrome presentation might have been forgotten if it wasn't for its tedious and difficult gameplay. While the card/deck aspects function fine on their own (I could see this being more successful as a board game), the tower defense combined with 'racing' is a wildly uncontrollable mechanic. Players must switch between an bird's eye view perspective of the arena and the third-person view of the vehicle they are sending out at the time. The world view hilariously sees a giant floating head resembling the character's avatar peering over the track.

Players can immediately switch back to the world view, leaving the car to fend for itself, but are encouraged to constantly switch back and forth between views and vehicles, maintaining awareness of all their cards (cars) on the field. The easiest way to collect resources is by using cars (they are distributed across the track), so it's challenging to even have enough resources to send out new cars if players don't maintain some level of control over the field. Players can (and should in order to win) send out multiple cars at once, so they have to switch between these vehicles and their main deck view as well. The actual driving is reminiscent of on-rails amusement park go-karts, complete with switching lanes and only half paying attention. And because users have very few options to defend their "tower" it plays less like a tower defense and more like waving forward the battlements of an eccentric collector's garage.

Vroom Kaboom is free-to-play on both Playstation 4 and PC (Steam). There are premium versions that include a significant amount of cars to start with. Vroom Kaboom also is VR compatible for both Occulus Rift, HTC Vive, and PS VR. It's nauseating to imagine what the virtual reality experience looks like; switching perspectives in one reality is enough to induce a migraine.

For the most hardcore fans of card and tower defense game fans, Vroom Kaboom might be worth checking out, and the free-to-play option is perfect for that. Otherwise, just keep driving.

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Vroom Kaboom released on PC, PlayStation 4, Oculus Rift, and HTC Vive on August 14, 2018 and is priced at $19.99 for the premium version and free-to-play otherwise. Screen Rant was provided a copy on PC for purposes of review.