Microids and Paws Inc., announced that Garfield Kart Furious Racing is scheduled to release on home consoles and PC this fall starting November 5th in the United States and November 7th in Europe.
The game is a single or multiplayer kart-racing affair where the objective is to take the pole position across 16 different tracks inspired by the world of Garfield, including but not limited to the Pastacosi Factory and Palerock Lake. Up to four players will be able to compete against each other in split-screen multiplayer locally, or if you have multiple Nintendo Switch units you’ll be able to take advantage of the built-in LAN support that allows you to connect up to eight consoles together.
Alternatively you can compete against up to seven other players online choosing between Garfield, Odie, Jon, Nermal, Arlene, Liz, Harry, and Squeak.
There will be three playable game modes at launch, including the Grand Prix mode, Single Race, and Time Trial.
As you race, drift, and battle other players for first place, you’ll also be able to gather power-ups to help aid you in the race, or memorize the tracks and make use of the shortcuts to take the lead.
You can also unlock new accessories to customize the karts with, not unlike Mario Kart 8.
Unfortunately there’s no gameplay trailer so I have no idea how this game looks in motion and whether or not it’s 30fps or 60fps. It’s kind of hard going back to 30fps games on home consoles when you’re used to playing at 60fps on PC… especially racing games.
Visually Garlfield Kart Furious Racing looks passable for what it’s trying to achieve. It looks like in addition to gathering power-ups you can also collect puzzle pieces but I’m not sure what they do. There are also some turbo pads and jumps.
I would like to hope that the game has an air of skill-based racing to it. We see the characters drifting but I wonder if it’s the kind where you actually have to master the drift to catch the edge like in Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed or if it’s the kind of drift where it doesn’t really matter and you don’t really go anywhere from drifting?
I know in F1 Racing Stars there wasn’t a whole lot of overhead when it came to the skill-based elements of the game.
Anyway, I’m not going to knock having an opportunity to see more kart racing games make their way to the market. In some cases more is better, and if we’re getting more games with split-screen options, family-friendly fun, and online multiplayer, then I’m not going to complain. Hopefully the actual gameplay of Garfield Kart Furious Racing is actually good, because if it’s not then it’s going to be terribly disappointing.