Because of the widespread use of mobile phones and texting, we see and use those little yellow happy face emoji icons all the time.  They even made a movie about them, and when I saw it on Netflix I watched the first five minutes of it and then stopped!  And now there’s a kart racing game with those icons (available on all current consoles but reviewed on PS4 here).  Does it fare better than the movie?  Well, you’ll just have to read on to find out.

There are two main modes of play.  Tournament lets you play cup races with four tracks each, or you can do each track separately.  Up to four can play locally, and the CPU will control the other racers.  You can select your difficulty as well.  When you are ready to race, you’ll pick your face, hat, car, and color, and you can unlock more as you go along.  As you drive, you can pick up weapons via boxes, which are typical kart racing fare.  Speed boosts, rockets, bombs, etc.  I was disappointed you can’t play as the poop emoji icon, but at least that’s a weapon in the game.

The problem with this game is that it uses a physics based game engine, so it makes your kart easy to flip over on its side.  There’s even a respawn button if this happens and you get stuck, but that’s really just a band aid for bad game design.  This also makes it easy for racers to bunch up and make pileups on the track, making it easier for other racers to get too far ahead.  The tracks either go on far too long, are just nothing but oval variations where you only turn one direction, or just downright ripoffs of other kart tracks.  There’s even one where you race on a rainbow!  And I swear I’ve heard the same stock music in my training videos at work!  All this makes emoji Kart Racer one of the worst kart games I’ve ever played!

Kid Factor:

Emoji Kart Racer is rated E-10 with ESRB descriptors of Crude Humor and Mild Fantasy Violence.  You can use the poop emoji as a weapon and it makes a farting sound, and karts can crash and spin around, but that’s it.  Reading skill is helpful for some of the menu text, but not necessary just to play.

Tags: Game Reviews, Movies with Children