MICRO MACHINES WORLD SERIES

A MINDBLOWING TWIN-STICK SHOOTER FROM THE GENRE’S MASTERS. $49.95 | PC, PS4, XO | www.codemasters.com

This has always been a series that had at least half an eye on selling toys. So it is that Micro

Machines World Series, the first new title carrying that licensed name for over a decade, bombards its racers with Nerf-branded weaponry fired from the barrels of GI Joebranded tanks on Hungry Hippos tracks. It’s hardly game-breaking, but it does lend an oddly stern-faced corporate quality to a game ostensibly about racing toy cars around improvised household tracks.

Single-player options have been pruned back so far that even a solo championship is absent. Occupying that space instead are casual and ranked online matches, timed special events and unlockable customisation options. Vehicle handling feels gratifyingly connected to 1991 without edging into unwieldiness. Race, Elimination and Battle modes feel suitably distinct from one another, although track knowledge is the kingmaker in two of the three. Only in Battles, where vehicles are let loose in arena layouts rather than circuits, does chaos truly prevail, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that, in the absence of real granular control, you’re best off spamming the fire button — like everyone else is doing. Although the vehicle roster stands at just 12, customisation options for them are almost inexhaustible.

Moveable objects line the bric-a-brac tracks, and it’s hard not to smile when a stray paper clip or Cheerio finds itself deciding a race by slowing a marauding tank that’s inches from the line. In that sense, old meets new harmoniously here. But the prevailing feeling is that the past and present are frequently looking at each other a bit bemused. The core racing is pleasingly intact for 16-bit nostalgists, but that doesn’t make

Micro Machines a no-brainer for the new-school, season-based multiplayer model.