Review: Table Top Racing: World Tour

Posted by Collin on May 27th, 2016 | 0 Comments | Tags: Playrise Digital , Table Top Racing: World Tour

Table Top Racing: World Tour is a combat racing game where you’ll use power-ups and abilities to take out other racers in search for first place. In addition, you’ll be upgrading your car from one of three classes to improve its performance to better tackle the challenges and championships. It’s a workable combat racing game with decent online play and enough to keep players engaged, but not necessarily for very long.

There are 5 main areas to race from in the game, with each having 4 different routes, leading to 20 total tracks. Areas include a workshop, a sushi bar, and a yacht out on the water. The areas look different enough, with the yacht area being a personal favorite due to its use of color. In each area and track there will be shortcuts and special events that can be uncovered by using leveled up weapons. Most times, these shortcuts and special events will include either a bronze, silver or gold coin to help you level up your cars. The coins can be well hidden and do take some time to find, but it’s only a small diversion from the racing portion. Some special events include knocking down numerous obstacles for players to run into. They won’t change the direction the car is heading per say, but can be a hindrance in what the player can see. Various obstacles will already be on the track and even though these can be knocked over, some items can’t, leading you to ramming head first into an item you thought you could knock over.

For single player modes, there is a championship mode with two separate cups for each class of car, and each have multiple challenges that you’ll need to complete and earn up to 3 stars on. Some challenges include catching up to another racer, racing without power-ups or trying to get the fastest lap possible. These challenges are fun at first, but can be tiresome fairly quickly. The one specific challenge that is the least fun, is the Drift challenges. In the Drift challenges, you’re tasked with comboing together the largest drift points. The early stages can be done by racing around the track, but the easiest way I found, was to drive in a circle until the desired score is reached. Even with driving in a circle, it took some patience until I got it right, and always dreaded when these appeared. The other single player mode is a Special Events mode, where you’ll have about 8 challenges for each class. You participate in a challenge with a specific car or ability. With fully upgraded cars, it is easy to win the majority of the races, and you won’t have much trouble getting gold. Finally an online mode with up to 8 players is available for those looking to race against other players. There is no matchmaking in the normal sense, as you’ll need to host or join another lobby to play online. Numerous different presets and options are available for the host to choose from. The only problem is there is no host migration, so if you are having the best race of your life and the host leaves, all progress and coins you earned in that race are gone. In the game online, my experience was mostly positive, with only a small hiccup here or there occurring.

As you continue racing and collecting coins, you will be able to buy new cars, upgrades, wheel abilities and paint jobs. Cars come in three varieties: Cult Classics, Street Racers, and Supercars, with Supercars being the fastest. There are only a total of 12 cars in the game and there isn’t much variety. You’ll only notice a difference once you jump from one class of racers to the next. Upgrades can improve stats such as handling, acceleration, or top speed. When racing against the computer with a non-upgraded car, it might be challenging to get first in each race, but once you have a fully upgraded car, you’ll be blazing past racers to first place in no time. I was bored at times when playing, as I didn’t have much competition. When playing online however, this could be the case, but you can easily turn off car upgrades if you are the host in a multiplayer lobby. Wheel abilities are secondary abilities that you can equip. These include a jump for your car, bling wheels that earn you more coins, or a peace-bomb where you can diffuse all racers of their current power-ups. The wheel abilities add to the diversity of the gameplay, but most times I completely forgot about them, and they didn’t have a big overall impact on my play sessions.

Power-ups found on the track include a homing missile, a freeze attack, an EMP and a boost. Each power-up can be collected again for an upgraded version of that same power-up. For example, instead of having one homing rocket, you’ll have three that fire out toward your opponents. Shortcuts can be unlocked by firing upgraded power-ups into marked items. Some shortcuts don’t require firing a power-up and it was confusing as some areas did look like shortcuts, only to then find out they weren’t. This lead to my car needing to be reset on the track. I found this very frustrating. Placing another object as a barrier could have helped alleviate this problem.

The driving specifically is serviceable, if not a bit stiff. Even with a fully upgraded Supercar, the driving can be hard to maneuver. The driving does its job in getting you from one place to another, but the driving specifically won’t be what makes you stay with Table Top Racing: World Tour.

In the end, Table Top Racing: World Tour is a serviceable combat racing game. It has enough single player content available to keep completionists awake to get all the upgrades and 3 star rankings. Online play is fun when playing with other people, but some matchmaking would have been nice. Although the game is fairly easy once you upgrade a few cars, I still had fun achieving the high ranks and winning each of the championships.

A copy of this game was purchased for review purposes. For more info on our review policy click here.

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