Bang Bang Racing Review: Fun Arcade Style Racer

Bang Bang Racing Review: Fun Arcade Style Racer

Bang Bang Racing
Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network
Racing

Bang Bang Racing is an overhead racing game where you look down upon the track. It reminds me of one of those old classic racing games where you had that same view point of looking down on the race track and racing that way. However, this one is slightly more zoomed in on your car and less on the entire raceway. It gives you two camera views, one that is a fixed location on the track and the other which follows you. The follow camera view is the one I ended up using the most, but it does give you a slight headache at the beginning until you get use to it.

The game features a career mode for you to play in. You will start out in the 1 star stage and make your way up to unlocking the 2 star, 3 star and 4 star stages. Each stage features only a short number of races for you to play until you finish it, and the difficulty isn’t the most challenging until you reach the end. However, you do have different types of races such as regular races, timed races and knockout rounds. As you beat each stage in career mode you will unlock a cup to participate in, which gives you a little extra to play after you finish the career mode. Each stage and each cup in career mode are extremely short and you can potentially complete the entire game in less than 2 hours. What makes this part worse is that there is no online multiplayer mode to play in. Thankfully you do have a free race mode where you can set up the race any way you like, including time trials for online leaderboards. At least with that you do have a little something to keep you occupied for awhile longer.

The gameplay is very solid and can be a lot of fun. There are multiple cars to unlock and choose from. Besides your gas and break, you will have a boosting ability as well. Plus, on each course there are a number of barrels along the race track that influence the races by containing explosives that you can set off by hitting that particular barrel and others that contain oil which will slip you up and slow you down. So there are plenty of obstacles to avoid on each track and there are also shortcuts for you to find and use on specific tracks.

In the end I wish this game was a little more challenging and that it had a few more courses to work your way through. It’s also disappointing that it’s local multiplayer play only because this type of game online could be a lot of fun. At least you can work your way to unlocking everything including the fastest cars and then you can attempt to achieve top spots on the time trail leaderboards. I loved the style of game that it presents you with, it’s a fun and unique arcade style racer that really is enjoyable, and it just needed a little bit more to it.

Score: 6/10