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Mantis Burn Racing

Mantis Burn Racing Hands-on

We got to play VooFoo's new top-down racer and talk to its creators.

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Top-down racers aren't really in fashion any more, with the days of Micro Machines long gone, but VooFoo are looking to change all that. Mantis Burn Racing is a top-down racer that's been updated for the modern age, including realistic physics and quality visuals. Is there a space for a top-down racer any more, though?

To give a bit of background on the game's creation, Creative Director Shaun Read talked to us about the inspiration behind Mantis Burn Racing. "The conversation was, when we were deciding to make Mantis Burn, what genre of game, what type of game can eight people [...] do the VooFoo visual treatment to."

The whole point of shifting focus to a racing game specifically is because "a lot of press called us parlour game specialists. Still don't know what a parlour game is but with us making chess, pool, we kind of get it a little bit, so we said 'right, we're going to break out of that mould, we're definitely not going to do a parlour game'. We could have made a beautiful looking card game or darts but we didn't want to do that. We've got a lot of talent in the team and we wanted to make something very different so we said that we loved racing games. We're not going to make a Gran Turismo, we're not going to compete against Forza, they've got 300 people working on it, so we said 'can we feasibly do a top-down racer of Micro-Machines mould and make it look as pretty as we know we can make our games look?'"

Sean Walsh, Marketing and PR Manager, added that the motivation was to also make it "one of the best in-genre, the way it looks, the way it handles, the real-world physics [...] something that is pick up and play but also has a bit of depth to it [...] it has got some kind of depth, it has got a USP and those things combine to make it a bit different. There's not many things like it on console."

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When we played the game we really got this sense that Mantis Burn Racing is an updated version of the top-down racer. The controls and the racetracks are what you would expect from the genre, although what they have done with the mould is what really makes it stand out. This isn't your average top-down racer - this goes above and beyond what we'd expect from the genre.

The most impressive aspect of the game by far was the physics. They work immaculately, and VooFoo used their previous experience with pool games (which, as Read said, need to have spot-on physics) to build an engine that suited their racer, and it does a superb job. Tire traction, crashes and jumps are all executed perfectly and this is what really makes Mantis Burn Racing stand out from other top-down racers. The cars shift in the air coming off jumps, drifting occurs when tires haven't got enough grip and you can really feel the different weights of cars.

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The actual racing experience benefits hugely from this physics engine, and the game is a mixture between arcade and realistic racing. The controls are very much that of an arcade game and players have to be hot on the analogue stick (we played on Xbox One) to turn the corners, but increased realism, like traction, add a new dimension to the racing.

What also makes this game standout is the amount of content that VooFoo has placed into the game. Read told us that there is 20 hours of content in the single player alone, with "three rookie career seasons, three pro career seasons and one veteran career season, [but] we're going to complete the trio, so the final two veteran seasons are going to be part of" DLC packages after launch. This career mode is extensive for a racer of this calibre and we were very impressed to hear how much content is in it, with different objectives and eight different types of events packing it out. These eight events range from Accumulator to Time Trial and many others, so there's plenty of variety in there as well.

Strong visuals also bolster the experience, whether it be the sand spraying from wheels, the intricately detailed landscapes or the cars themselves, it all looks great. Something that has been revealed in the time since we saw the game is that Mantis Burn Racing will also take advantage of the PS4 Pro as well and will support full native 4K at 60FPS, not to mention adding detail to the vehicles as well as 1080p views for each player in split-screen as well. The game looks set to offer a stunning visual experience, then, which is something you don't often see from top-down racers.

One part of the game that we didn't get to try out too much is what they call the "RPG-style upgrade system" of the cars, where you can kit your car out with five different kinds of upgrades: gearbox, engine, suspension, boost and tires. "The way it works," Read said, "is that each vehicle has a certain amount of upgrade slots [...] and you can fill them in any way you want, so if you want to make a ridiculously powerful vehicle you can just put loads of engines in it". Read warns, though, that upgrades need to be carefully considered, as you can easily overpower certain aspects and unbalance your car.

These upgrades are infinite as well, and the player can keep getting more and more upgrades until eventually they unlock accumulated upgrades, like x2 and x4 and so on. In fact, with the different upgrades and upgrade slots VooFoo claim that there are around 300,000 possible combinations, so there is clearly a lot of depth to the upgrades in the game, something Walsh hopes will add to its replayability.

Although we didn't get to tweak our cars ourselves we can see this adding another layer to racing and being very important. When we raced our boost didn't last very long and our car drifted quite wide, something that was to our detriment on a particular track with very tight hairpin turns, so upgrades will be a very interesting feature to toy around with in the finished game, especially when the stakes are raised with accumulator upgrades as well.

As expected with a racer of this type there is also local multiplayer, which allows up to four players on the same screen at any one time, as well as online multiplayer with up to eight players. These include all of the events in the game and can be set to be with or without upgraded vehicles as well, which is a nice touch for those purely looking to just test their skill, not their customised car.

In short, there isn't a lot we can say to the detriment of Mantis Burn Racing. By VooFoo's own admission it is looking to update the top-down racer, out of fashion in recent history, and it does a fantastic job of doing so. The studio has taken its time to tweak everything from the physics to the track design and the visuals, and has come up with a top-down racer to challenge the best of them. For fans of the genre, you absolutely cannot afford to miss this. As for a release date, they assured us it will be announced soon although it is currently in Steam early access.

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Mantis Burn RacingScore

Mantis Burn Racing

REVIEW. Written by Sam Bishop

"The only issues we had were minor, the racing experience itself is great fun."



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