Beach Buggy Racing

Genre: Kart Racing

Players: 1-4 Competitive (Local Split-Screen)

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Review:

Beach Buggy Racing is a family-friendly Kart Racing game released on mobile devices and PC in 2014, ported to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in 2015, and then ported to Nintendo Switch in 2017. This was arguably poor timing for this game to come to a Nintendo platform, as that same year saw the release of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on Nintendo Switch, arguably the greatest Kart Racing videogame ever made. However, at $10, Beach Buggy Racing could at least claim to be a budget-priced alternative.

Despite its low price, Beach Buggy Racing has some good things going for it in the graphics department. The game has a good overall resolution and a consistently silky-smooth framerate, even in 4-player split-screen mode. It also touts colorful and varied visuals, and water and lighting effects that are occasionally quite nice. What’s more, at only 235MB, this is quite a feat that the game looks as good as it does given how very little room it takes up on your Nintendo Switch. Having said that, both the maps you’re racing on and especially the racers themselves are fairly low-poly, looking almost like featureless Muppets more than identifiable characters.

Actually, the game overall has an overbearing feeling of being fairly generic. The locations here look nice, but don’t have a strong personality to them, and the menus definitely shout “mobile game”. This is not helped by the game’s sounds, which are also quite generic and reminiscent of mobile games, and with the various drivers all being unsettlingly mute. The music is at least decent, with fitting “tropical island” acoustic themes, but none of it is memorable, and the game’s refusal to tie these themes to specific tracks only adds to the game’s generic feeling.

As for the gameplay, it’s decent… although again, generic. There’s very little wrong with it (although the controls are somewhat stiff), but there’s not much depth or nuance to it either. Players can spend in-game coins to upgrade the performance of their selectable vehicles, and unlock new characters, but the races themselves are just… gas, brake, turn, power slide, weapon pickup, character-specific on-one-use ability, and that’s it.

There are a few additional complaints I have regarding the multiplayer. Firstly, players using only a single Joy-Con will find that they’ll be playing with the gas button always-on, with no way to turn this feature off. They can still use the Joy-Con’s SL button to brake, but even so, this is annoying. Also, I can’t help but be disappointed that this game does not feature any sort of online functionality.

Still, while it’s generally unambitious and extremely generic, I’d still say Beach Buggy Racing is a better-than-average Kart Racer. It doesn’t do much beyond the basics of the genre, but it does those basic elements fairly well. I cannot stress enough that there is no reason to play this game if you can play Mario Kart instead, but if you’re looking for a cheap alternative, Beach Buggy Racing will be a suitable option for you.

tl;dr – Beach Buggy Racing is a family-friendly Kart Racing game that’s pretty generic, but still does the basics of the genre fairly well. It is absolutely not going to be a replacement for Mario Kart, but it is a sufficient budget-priced alternative.

Grade: C+

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