Renzo Racer

There was time in my life when I never wanted to play a kart racing game again. It felt like every company needed to have their own version, and most were terrible. But lately I have mellowed out on this stance, thanks to high-quality entries that go a long way to remind me why this type of game was so popular in the first place. Unfortunately, Renzo Racer is a stark reminder of how bad things used to be. This new game from EnsenaSoft recycles all of the worst elements the genre has to offer, giving us a generic racer with predictable weapons and characters you'll immediately forget. And trust me, we haven't even scratched the surface on why this is one of the worst racing games of the year.

If Renzo Racer looks familiar, it may be because I previewed the game two years ago. I was cautiously optimistic at the time, hoping that the developer would spend the time fine-tuning the handling and giving the animal cast some sort personality. Now that it has finally come out of Early Access and is for sale as a full game, I was excited to check in with Renzo Racer and see how it all came together. I shouldn't have bothered.

Look, this is going to be a negative review. It's not that this is just another generic kart racing game, but rather that almost everything about it is aggressively bad. I had to double check to see if I was still playing the Early Access build from 2017, because this game certainly doesn't feel finished. But before we get to that, I do want to highlight some of the things I genuinely like about Renzo Racer.

Probably the best thing I can say about this game is that it's loaded with content. I get the feeling that the last two years has been spent filling this game with unique tracks to race and characters to choose. There are twenty courses in all, which is even more impressive when you discover that they aren't repeating the locations. I was impressed by how different each stage looked, as well as the different obstacles they would add to each location. We'll go from getting swept up by a tornado in the desert stage to collecting keys to open up a secret in a pirate-themed water level. There's a nice variety here, and I love the look of most of these locations.

There are also a lot of characters to choose from. Although the game is named after Renzo Racoon, he's joined by Lenny Lizard, Bayou Beaver, Sherman Shark, Alex Alligator, Skyla Skunk and ten other animal friends. I mentioned in my preview that the cast has potential, and I still stand by that. On their own, the character models look good and I like the different variations in the vehicles. The problem is that there's nothing in this game introducing them. No funny cinemas to watch or fact sheets to read, just generic animal characters on a select screen. They have no personalities and will be quickly forgotten about after you uninstall Renzo Racer.

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Of course, the problems with this game go far beyond a few generic characters. This is a game that gets almost everything wrong, including the little things. A good example of this is the way the game controls. Most racing games will map the acceleration to the controller's right shoulder button and use the left side for the brakes. Renzo Racer completely flips this around, but nobody told the button guide image they show before every event. This guide is filled with inaccuracies, which is made worse when you realize that you can't customize the button configuration.

That's bad, but it's nothing compared to how the karts handle. The vehicles are slow and sluggish, while simultaneously feeling like there's no weight to them. It's as if they want to flip over whenever you drive over gravel, take a corner too hard or mess up a landing. Some of that you might be able to defend, but there were far too many times when it felt like I flipped around for no reason. No matter which character I chose or how long I played the game, I never felt in control of Renzo Racer.

And it certainly doesn't help that this game has perhaps the worst special item in the history of kart racing. For the most part, the item pick-ups are pretty standard fare. There's a turbo boost, bombs you can drop and missiles that can be fired at the opponents. The only original item comes in the form of a four-leaf clover. That sounds good, but it's actually an item that will make you swap places with the person who is either in front or behind. A bad luck pick-up will send you backwards and a good luck charm will send you forwards, unless you're already in first place, in which case the good luck item will actually teleport you to a random location and have you facing the wrong direction.

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The problem with this item should be obvious, since the idea of teleporting to a completely different part of the track is inherently jarring. But it's actually worse than that, because it trains you to avoid driving over the mystery boxes. I ran into the bad luck charm at least once a game, whereas the good version almost never showed up. If you get a comfortable lead and hope to win the race, then the best thing you can do is purposely miss the items, because you never know when the bad luck charm will strike. That's not what you want in your kart racing game.

The most frustrating part is that these are the exact same problems I complained about two years ago with the Early Access build. Is it possible that the game I'm playing in 2019 is actually worse than the preview version from 2017? It's not that I expected Renzo Racer to be the next Mario Kart, but I'm thoroughly disappointed by the squandered potential. There are good elements here, but they are completely overshadowed by a generic kart racing game that is never fun to play.