Micro Machines World Series Review

Micro Machines World Series is the latest iteration in the long-running franchise from gaming royalty Codemasters. You’d be hard-pressed to find a gamer who hasn’t heard of the famed developers, and you’re even less likely to find one who doesn’t have fond memories of at least one of their titles. For me that title was Micro Machines V3 on the original PlayStation. Between that game and a dedicated multitap (member multitaps? I member), untold hours of my childhood melted away, and fierce rivalries were born in those lengthy sessions that still echo in the present (some twenty years later). So when the opportunity popped up to review the latest game in the series, I charged at it with all the vim and vigour of a 32-year-old manchild trying to recapture his youth. So how does my powerful nostalgia for the series measure up against the reality of this latest release?

Cereal Killer

For those who skipped straight from being a baby to an adult, Micro Machines are tiny cars and the game lets you race them. But just like when you were a child playing with toy cars, you weren’t racing them on a perfect 1:1 rendering of Mt Panorama replete with dynamic weather, you were racing them on the kitchen table around a bowl of soggy Weetbix, or out in the shed amongst your dad’s power tools. This is one of the strengths of the Micro Machines series, in that tracks are incredibly creative and varied, and seem like they have sprung straight out of a child’s imagination. It’s an element that’s present in World Series too, and despite the meagre number of them, it’s by far its greatest asset. However, beyond the creative track design that brought a smile to this old man’s face, there’s a patent shallowness to almost every other aspect which makes Micro Machines a hard sell, even with its budget $40 AUD price tag.

There’s little ceremony to the way you are thrust into the game; there are no challenges, no career mode and no true progression systems, you are simply given a choice of three modes and told to have at it. All the cars are unlocked from the outset, not that this really matters, because as far as I can tell, in two of the three modes they drive exactly the same. That’s right, a James Bond-inspired Aston Martin handles identically to a tank or firetruck. This is a huge disappointment, and a massive missed opportunity to capture the essence of Micro Machines toys and games, and that is in its diversity and collectable nature. The game would have been far better making you earn new rides and perhaps inject some RPG mechanics in there to give a sense of personalisation and progression. One of the awesome aspects of MMV3 was the ability to gamble cars on races, which feeds into that sense of addiction that a child who collects small things knows all too well. None of that is present here, and the game suffers for it.

It’s a crying shame really, because the actual racing is really fun. While the less said about Battle mode the better, the two Race and Elimination modes both look and feel great. Drifting around corners, getting like three feet of air on sweet jumps, finding tight shortcuts, slipping through puddles of spilt milk and dodging stray bits of cereal feels both challenging and rewarding. But as soon as the thrill begins, it’s all over again. Tracks are very short and feel like they’re done and dusted in only a few minutes. This feeling of brevity is accentuated by the fact that after each event you are thrown back to the main screen again and have to find another lobby. World Series should be really going for that Call of Duty feel where you’re constantly playing game after game with little downtime. But instead of keeping your head and heart in the game, you’ll be sitting there staring blankly at the screen and wondering who might win Masterchef or how many seasons of Law and Order there are. While there is some progression in that you can earn skins and the like and join ranked play, it all feels so incredibly empty. It also doesn’t help that, as of writing, there are very few human adversaries to go up against, and for the most part you’ll be racing against AI.

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Obligatory ice level sucks like most obligatory ice levels have a tendency to do

World Series should be really going for that Call of Duty feel where you’re constantly playing game after game with little downtime. But instead of keeping your head and heart in the game, you’ll be sitting there staring blankly at the screen and wondering who might win Masterchef or how many seasons of Law and Order there are

Final Thoughts

Micro Machines Word Series makes me sad in many ways. The fleeting moments of fun I had while playing reminded me of a simpler time in my gaming life, but at the end of the day it is simply one gigantic missed opportunity to create something modern and engaging. Give me diversity in car type and feel, give me a real sense of progression, give me car gambling, give me something with depth. Micro Machines will probably bring a smile to your face for an hour or so, but it feels like it’s just not in it for the long haul.

Reviewed on PS4