Mantis Burn Racing – Our test drive

Thanks to VooFoo Studios we have finally received the Steam code needed to install Mantis Burn Racing. Once we have downloaded the required 4 Gb of contents an engaging game intro starts and makes us craving to put our wheels on the track.

At first glance

Mantis Burn Racing is an isometric view racing game where you’re requested to drive off-road vehicle, in a perfect Dakar/Baja style. It’s like to jump back in the earlier ’90’s with an updated graphic. Don’t let the hardware requirements scare you, this game is running smooth on my 2008 quad-core AMD and with 2 year old cheap video board.

Never lift off

Let’s be clear since the beginning. If you’re looking for a hyper-realistici driving simulator which allows you to play with thousands of setup values, then Mantis Burn Racing it’s suited for you.

Driving physics are very simple and they look like a RWD only a few times. You’re going to suffer some tracrtion loss when accelerating from a stop, especially if you’re using your keyboard to play. Countersteer is forbidden, even slightly, it’s going to get you into a wild transition and into the wall.-Instead of drifting you simply let the car slide on all four wheels. Like most arcade driving games the brakes use is not needed, if you need to decelete you just breefly lift the accelator key.

The handling is quite different from one vehicle to another.

Cars are not damaged by impacts, but it’s advisable to avoid any contact. After the impact the car is going to bounce from one track side to the other like a pin-ball. It’s also possible di destroy some scenery object and some off these will break only if you hit them with the truck, this means some shortcuts are available only to the heavy vehicles.

Game modes

The welcome menu let’s you enter the three game modes : 

• carreer
• single race
• online

Single race let’s you try circuits and vehicles without carreer constraints. The cars at your disposal are fantasy models. You can drive three different models a buggy, a sedan or  a truck. You can guess just looking at them that you’re going to race off-road. The truck, in particular, reminds a Dakar racing truck.

The view is isometric and you have different camera modes. Some track sections are very dark and its difficult to see where we’re driving. VooFoo developers have confirmed that they are evaluating how to include headlights in the future updates.

The single events which compose carreer championship can be single races or series. Single races can be of different types/rules. In addition to the classic get first to finish, we have knock-outs, best lap or scoring. This last game formula let’s you gain points basing on your position on  the racetrack, the race ends when the first player reaches 10,000 points.

Onine racing is engaging, but we had some trouble finding opponents. This may have been related to the time of day we tried.

IT – In alcune gare la scelta del mezzo è libera. EN – Some races allow different cars at the start

IT – Il Buggy è il mezzo più leggero e veloce. EN – The buggy is the lightest and fasted one

IT – L’officina dove aggiunge i potenziamenti. Aumentando il livello dell’auto sarà possibile ottenere altri slot per installare nuovi aggiornamenti EN – The workshop where we can upgrade cars

IT – Griglia di partenza Heavy EN – Hevy stating grid

Il mega camion

IT – Le condizioni di luce sono variabile e comprendono il crepuscolo EN – Light conditions include sunset.

IT – La schermata di avanzamento della stagione EN – Season progress

EN – Main screen

Hunting for experience

The carrer involves to finish races on podium in a given order. A podium unlocks the following event. During races you’re to collect some resources _

• Experience points
• money or G
• gears

Experience points give you access to vehicle upgrades and to the different vehicle. 

G currency can buy you cars or level up them. You have limited slots to install performance upgrades, which you can increase by raising the vehicle level. Once updated the car will feature a new  and more aggressive look, adding rollbars or spoilers. Performance upgrades can be :

• engine – for top speed
• trasmission – for acceleration
• suspension – for handling
• tyres – for grip
• turbo – for more push to pass power

You need to be very carefull while upgrading your vehicles. Some carreer events require a specific vehicle others let you decide which one to use. Over-updating one car can leave you with a non competive one. This way you can get stack at some carrer event.

Gears are a sort of medals to collect in order to unlock carreer seasons. At the end of every season you need to have collect a certain amount of gears to procede to the next one. You can obtain gears by completing race missions, such as drift for at least 8 seconds, destroy 10 objects, fly your car jumping for 5 seconds and so on

Pros

• Forging harware requirements
• 90’s style game
• Simple and fast paced
• Good scenery graphics

Contro

• 90’s style 
• Only three cars
• Few customization options – Only colors
• Arcade style