Sometimes, when you’re in the mood to play something fun, you don’t need something big or flashy. Fun gameplay , at the end of the day, can make any game worth playing, even if doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of any big name, AAA blockbuster title. That being said, Smash Cars is shallow in both amount of playable content and entertainment value.

At its most basic, Smash Cars is an RC racing game from TikGames and Creat Studios. You can take control of a variety of tiny racers and challenge your friends on PSN to races, performing stunts to boost your speed and give you the edge. It’s not exactly reinventing the wheel, but this re-release of the PS2 era racer certainly feels dated.

This is especially true of the controls.. Driving is at its most fun when you’re making cool jumps, racing past your competitors, and performing at your peak. In Smash Cars, you never really feel like you have a whole lot of control over your little racer. The steering is less than responsive even with cars with a high handling rating. There’s also not much race variety. There are a mix of time trials and races, and the key to building your speed is doing flips. If you hit a big enough jump, the camera will let your see your stunts in slow motion. While this is cool the first few times you do it, as you play the game, it get repetitive really fast, especially given the lack of trick variety. Doing flips refills your boost meter pretty much every time, so there’s no real incentive to get creative.

There isn’t much variety in the extra content. There are three body types and a few cases for each one, but the different variety of cars doesn’t feel unique enough to provide any real replay value. Also, all the tracks are variations of paths through the same island, so there is nothing new to look at the entire game. Once you’ve seen the water, sand and a few roads, you’ve seen all the game has to offer.

Multiplayer is pretty basic. You can challenge your friends or join open races over PSN. One glaring omission is split screen multiplayer. Part of the greatness of these little racing games is trash talking with your friends, but you’ll have to pay the price of admission here, as split screen is only available as optional DLC. It’s not expensive, but given the importance of this mode, it’s absence seems particularly glaring.

Pros:

• Generally fun premise
• Racing tiny cars

Overall, Smash Cars isn’t bad per se, but its lack of content and omission of local multiplayer means it’s not going to entertain you for more than a few hours. Feel free to check it out, and if you’re a fan of the genre you may enjoy it, but I can’t recommend paying more than a few bucks for it.

Final Grade: C-

This review was conducted on a downloadable review copy of the game for the PlayStation 3 provided by Creat Studios.