Obliteracers is a Mario Kart-like racing game where your main objective isn’t to come in first, but to, as the name suggests, obliterate your opponents using devious weapons. Have you played Joy Ride Turbo on Xbox 360? It’s almost exactly the same except the races last only a few seconds. You pick up weapons while racing and must use them to destroys opponents in your path. The last person standing wins the round. If you win enough rounds, you win the race. I’ll be honest, I was expecting an experience similar to traditional kart racing games and the fact that the duration of each racing session is so short detracts from the experience. However, that shouldn’t stop you from considering Obliteracers because, despite its flaws, it offers a lot of fun and variety especially when it comes to its campaign.
The campaign offers over a dozen levels and each of them feels unique. As I said, the game plays like any other kart racing title where you have to collect weapons and take out your enemies. The issue I had was the duration of each round. They just feel too short and disjointed. There are endurance races as well but they take you out of the match too often and how you get back in is a mystery. More often than not I got kicked right out because not only did I spawn at the edge, but the other racers just overtook me while I was struggling to find my character.
Many gamers out there will love it but I wanted Obliteracers to be a little grueling. Maybe adding more lives to each racer would’ve made it better. Don’t take them out of the game, just make it so a shield or similar mechanic depletes but you’re still in the race in the same position you were. For example, make it so that it takes three successful hits with your weapons to knock someone out so you have to pick up three upgrades rather than just one. There are many other ways to address this and I hope the developers issue updates which do that. Both standard races and endurance races need tweaks.
One of the best aspects of Obliteracers has to be its visuals despite the fact that they’re somewhat blurry. I’m not sure if this is an issue with the resolution or anti-aliasing but they just seem muddy. Fortunately, it’s not a severe problem and adjusting the sharpness of your television quickly addresses that concern. The levels are detailed and each racing arena looks spectacular. There is a lot of variety because the levels offered range from futuristic cities to tropical islands. There’s also nighttime racing and weather. Yes, Obliteracers features rain and it looks amazing! There is a trade-off though, the game runs at only 30 FPS and that affects the controls. They’re a little clunky due to the lag which you experience when cutting the frame rate in half. I would’ve liked to see Deck13 further optimize the game so that it would run at 60 FPS. This would greatly benefit the title and make the controls more responsive, not to mention improve the smoothness of the visuals. Despite this issue, the game is highly playable and enjoyable. It can sometimes get tricky when you’re on very narrow tracks and you want more delicate control over your racer.
For those of you who don’t know, increasing the frame rate to 60 FPS cuts input lag in half. This is why 60 FPS titles feel more responsive. For example, take a shooter. Compare Halo 4 on Xbox 360 and Xbox One. On Xbox 360 is runs at 30 FPS and it’s harder to aim than on Xbox One which runs the same game at 60 FPS in The Master Chief Collection.
Summary
Overall, Obliteracers is a great game which you will really like if you’re a fan of kart racing titles. You can see the inspiration taken from Mario Kart and similar games especially when it comes to the endurance matches. I just wish the penalty for getting hit by your opponent and getting taken out of the race wasn’t as severe. That mechanic definitely needs to be reworked because it can get a little frustrating. I also wish the visuals weren’t blurry and Obliteracers features a faster frame rate. Apart from those concerns, I think it’s a lot of fun and if you want to truly enjoy it, play it online with your friends. That adds a new level of hilarity that can’t be matched with playing against computer-controlled opponents.
Asher is a games journalist, former News Writer (Gaming) at Windows Central. They contributed 1110 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: wrote over 1,100 ICXM pieces on Xbox news, hardware reviews, and platform commentary before joining Future plc’s Windows Central in 2017.