Micro Machines World Tour

For: PS4, Xbox One, PC

Classified: G

Micro Machines has a long history in video games, but it's the original top-down racer — which first launched in 1991 and subsequently came to virtually every 90s gaming platform — that's most fondly remembered. World Series is Codemasters' attempt to tap into that iconic design while also imbuing it with the character-focused online fun of competitive games like Overwatch. Unfortunately, it fails on both fronts.

At its core the racing in World Series feels similar to the original, with the wide-drifting and easily scattered cars zooming around the household-themed tracks just like real life Micro Machines might. Fun as that simple premise could be, though, the game seems determined to keep players from enjoying it.

You can choose between racing or battling, either on your own against AI or in an online ranked mode. In battle, each car has its own personality and special abilities, and matches progress like a team-based online shooter might. But controlling these cars is way too imprecise for anything other than careening around at top speed, making the objective-based play incredibly frustrating.

In race mode, the special abilities are replaced by homogenising power-ups, with skillful racing rarely being enough to keep you out in front. Where you end up placing feels due entirely to luck, which might be ok if you were having fun racing your friends, but you're not. 

With the game lacking the various vehicle types and single-player Challenge mode of the original, the relative impossibility of playing with other people is the biggest issue here. Local multiplayer is limited to the uninteresting elimination mode, as the game doesn't offer any form of split-screen. Meanwhile I played through dozens of online matches and the game struggled to fill the match with players every single time. This means each brief race was preceded by minutes of fruitless searching, with the end result seeing me pitted against a squad of AI (and maybe one human opponent) anyway.

Post-release updates could fix some of the issues I have with the game, but it will never be the next Rocket League or Overwatch. Complex, strategic online play simply doesn't seem applicable to the zany, top-down design of 26 years ago.