Mantis Burn Racing

Mantis Burn Racing….WHERE to begin! It’s a fun, top-down racing game. Just that simple. But it’s also much more. It’s a game of extreme skill (over time), as well as some unusually complex strategy. I’d guess from the point that I’ve reached that success is about half skill, and about half a carefully upgraded vehicle. But it’s also very much a game of patience, (and no small amount of grinding) as skills and currency are obtained. Especially for the lesser skilled player.
Mantis Burn Racing (MBR) is a “game of threes”:
THREE vehicle classes – light, medium and heavy
THREE skill levels – Rookie (the starting level), Pro and Veteran (both acquired through skill over time.)
THREE seasons for each skill level, each involving all three classes of vehicle. Each new season (after the original) is started upon the acquisition of a specific number of “gears”, or awards for each of numerous races and groups of races within each season.
Each skill level has three “new” vehicles to be upgraded, and used for that level alone (I’m told.)
The MBR races award experience points based on actions within each race (such as “air”, drafting, and destruction), and coming in third place or better provides “cash” awards (as does reaching what might be called levels.) Early in the game, upgrades, levels (and currency) are awarded quickly. Later on, more and more slowly. So as a rookie, a player finds their cars upgraded quickly. Later on, more slowly.
MBR has numerous tracks of various surfaces and environments: sand, city, night, day, caves, snow…..a little bit of everything for everyone. A less skilled player will likely use up a significant number of total upgrades on Rookie level season, and the associated vehicles. A skilled player will advance quickly, and therefore see more upgrades applied to Pro or Veteran vehicles. As such, each player will see their own skills most suitable utilized.
Though MBR is really fun, it’s not yet perfect. For one example, MBR basically places your vehicle dead center, then spins and rotates the world around you as you drive. Some players may find that to be disconcerting, and indeed must be ignored to some degree until one grows accustomed to it, and can focus on that very small mid-screen point. A beginning player may find the game frustrating, as skills are developed and beginning cars are VERY basic. And the grinding can be a bit annoying, as only success provides the necessary cash awards. (Failing at necessary goals does not.) There are no overall maps of tracks (that I can find.) And to take one’s eyes away long enough to take a glance at the screen-corner map segment generally is very costly on courses as active as these are.
Much of MBR is as expected, but offers some degree of originality, though few surprises. Even if a player finds they lack the skills necessary to complete the game (as I suspect is most common), this is a game that offers play based on skill, and should be appreciated and played as such. MBR deserves a far more involved and detailed review, but that should be left for each player to gain on their own.
Thank you.

Introduction
Mantis Burn Racing is developed and published by VooFoo Studios. Their first projects had nothing to do with racing, instead focusing on card & board games along with pool/snooker. Mantis has received far better reception than the previous three titles but a pattern still emerges in concern to the overall pricing of VooFoo games.

Gameplay
At least the screenshots offer no deceit. What you see is what you get and that is, quite a decent racer indeed. I’m not going to deny its element of fun since Mantis Burn can be quite entertaining until you realize that there’s more difference in the cars than in the tracks themselves. Truly, if it would have still been in Early Access, I would have let this misshap slide and hope to see a decent amount of tracks and scenery by the time it fully releases. But in its current state, once you spend more than two hours and the progression allows you to purchase better vehicles, you begin to feel like in a continuous loop as far as the racing tracks are concerned. Reversing them and offering several game modes, doesn’t make them feel new in any way whatsoever. As if the variety issue wasn’t enough, I was disheartened by how much grinding is required in order to unlock the best cars within Mantis Burn Racing.
From a gameplay perspective, it looked great on paper: a top-down 3D racer with modern graphics, responsive keyboard bindings, drifting and a logical scale of progression which involved in-game currency (gears) that can be spent on the purchase of new vehicles along with a merit system for the mechanical upgrades. It delivers only in partial terms. With the almost encouraged grinding of previously passed levels, you can gather more than enough gears without the implication of any actual effort. Especially if you rinse & repeat the Rookie League from the beginning of the Career Mode. The upgrades are fairly superficial since they only offer a one-time use and even then you notice a marginal benefit at best. At least you unlock these in limited number so you can’t cheat as much as with the currency. The keyboard controls were great in terms of response, though the inability to rebind them might disappoint some players. Still the game runs fine even without the need of a controller. But I cannot stress this enough: it matters not how many cars you have in-game (also spread into three categories: Light, Medium & Heavy) if the racing tracks become familiar to the point at which you barely put any effort in it at all. Finding a perfect balance between the number of vehicles and the circuits, is what makes or breaks a racing video game.

For a top-down racer, Mantis Burn certainly looks the part. While the graphical settings are allowing little freedom over the actual tweaking, running the game maxed out, you can’t really complain. It’s a smooth experience, the sounds are convincing and even the music doesn’t feel repetitive. From the limited selection of tracks and scenery, two major stages stand out: Desert and City. The arid and sometimes volcanic racing circuits offer mostly endurance challenges, while drifting is more at home within the urban sprawls, especially as the game passed the Rookie levels. Combining that with the speed of the cars unlocked late-game, Mantis might be considered better than its counterparts/rivals. If only it had more tracks to show and test.

Pros
+ Nice graphics and sounds
+ Sharp control scheme
+ Steam Achievements & Trading Cards
Cons
- Tracks are in dire need of variety
- Slightly overpriced
- Too much grinding to unlock new cars
Result / Final thoughts
I still think that Mantis Burn Racing can introduce new stages and environments, which is why I’d still recommend you buy it in the near future and once you find it at some form of discount or bundled. Even with the presence of Trading Cards and its large number of Achievements, it’s definitely not worth 16 dollars or euros.
Rating 65/100

This review was submitted for Imperial Reviews, through the generous contribution of RedHill.

If you were a fan of Super Off-Road or Powerslide........congrats, you're old like me. And also, this game will be right up your alley! Lots of dusty, tail-sliding fun to be had here (there's a non-dusty map as well but really, where's the fun in that) with a reasonably decent balance of talent & upgrades required to succeed.
There's really not many racing games like this left, let alone on PC, so give these guys your support if you're into arcade racers!

82 / 100
Keep Your Speed Up, Keep Your Line & Learn The Shortcuts!
It's all about the racing; Mantis Burn Racing (MBR) is a truly classic top-down racer.
MBR's standout feature is it's polished core mechanics. The dynamic camera does a competent job at keeping up with the twists & turns, focusing your vision right where it needs to be (with obstacles generally kept at a minimum), but more impressive was the physics & controls of the cars. Precision steering that acts accordingly to the track environment/vector & to the vehicles’ physical attributes. Some of the best mechanics I have seen.
Although there are only three main variants, each vehicle type provides a clearly unique handling model, so sometimes choosing the right vehicle for the track can be the difference between a good & a great time. I found the Heavy class to be pretty useless overall so unless forced to use them I tended to swap between the Light & Medium classes.
The Career mode offers some branching paths to break up the linearity (as seen in the screenshot below). On completing a rectangular loop, it will generally unlock some additional upgrades for your vehicles. Ultimately, it’s a fairly standard affair with each race offering a number of challenges across a number of different race modes. It struggled to keep my attention in the early seasons as the track selection was a little repetitive, vehicles were slow & competition was easy.
It wasn't until I hit the Pro that the pace picked up, with Veteran offering a semi-reasonable challenge. Upgrades & vehicle customisations do tend to make a race either very easy or too hard, although you do still get some relatively balanced races along the way. MBR is rather easy overall, although getting all the objectives would offer some higher challenge/replayability for the perfectionists.
Driving skilfully also will reap you further rewards during a race, for doing things like slip streaming, drifting, clean sections & jumps. It encourages clean racing by also giving the vehicle collisions more of a 'bang' than a 'bounce'. This can cost you a lot of speed/time. Likewise, when you inevitably hit a track barrier (or rock) the slowdown & recovery time can be significant enough to cost you the race. Can lead to some frustrating races (AKA Restarts) & feels excessive at times. There was no rubber-banding AI that I noticed.
Graphically, the realistic colour tones & the depth of field blur on the already beautiful, highly detailed track scenery make for some visually rich & varied driving locations. There are some memorable routes on both gravel & tarmac, nature to the city, that often throwing some challenging cornering sections. These can take many attempts to master. Although there is not a huge number of tracks (*expanded recently with Snowbound & Elite Class DLCs*), the quality is fantastic!
The audio on the other hand was a bit lacklustre. Vehicle engine sounds lack balls, sounding a bit muffled like the environment effects. Music selection is fairly limited as well, it’s alright, but didn't get me too pumped to race hard. An 'arcade-y’ announcer/vocals would have been a nice additional to give the game some more personality.
Authentic, reminiscent of a 'Super Skidmarks/Super Off Road' for the modern era, MBR offers a quality top-down racing experience. It’s pure & simple racing fun with plenty of crazy drifting as you navigate around some well-designed tracks. Still for all it does exceptionally well, its let down to a degree by the easy difficulty, unbalanced AI & rather repetitive career mode.
If you enjoyed reading this review, please follow True Blue Reviews for more recommendations!

Rating
6/10
Worth it?
For the full price - no.
I got it on a -50% discount (7.99€) and that's fair.
Playtime
I've played it for more than 15 hours.
In that time I've completed the Rookie and the Pro seasons in the single player mode.
I haven't played any multi player games or the Veteran seasons.
Comparison
I got interested in it because I loved Death Rally. Mostly the classic 1996 version, but the 2012 remake was also pretty good.
This is similar, but with limited features. The most noticeable difference is that there's no weapons here. You don't try to destroy your enemies, it's purely about racing.
Plot
There isn't any.
You just race in different types of events with different types of cars.
You get paid and you can upgrade your car, but that's it.
Look...
It looks... ok. When you see it for the first time you might actually say that it's pretty. But then you get to play the first season where the only tracks are in a sandy scenery, about 3 of them in different variations. That gets really boring really quickly.
Then you play the next season and the next, race after race, 50, 60, 70 of them, and you realize there are less than 10 tracks (and their reversed versions or day/night) in 3 different settings (sand, city, industrial). And you don't care how pretty they might be, because you're getting sick of looking at the same tracks over and over again.
The menus and UI in general could use some improvements. It often happens that the information you're looking for is not displayed anywhere - for example when you need to complete a race in under 3 minutes to get a bonus, but after the race it doesn't show the total race time but only your fastest lap time.
... and Feel
Driving can actually be fun. I've played with a Steam Controller and I've enjoyed driving enough to spend 15 hours doing it. There are three types of cars (light, medium & heavy) and you can feel the difference between them.
And while using the controller for racing is great, in some of the menus the control schema can be confusing. A couple of times I've sold an already-equipped upgrade when I wanted unlock more upgrade slots. The game constantly shows which buttons do what in menus, but the assigned actions were not natural and I pressed something else because it felt right.
Music
The soundtrack by Robert Paul Allen & Jon Bates was actually pretty good. Some of the tracks were energetic and great for driving.
You can check it out on Bandcamp.
Gameplay
Like I already mentioned, this is a game about driving. You drive one of three classes of cars in various racing events (sprint, time trial, overtake, hot lap, knockout, etc.). And even though the number of various maps is limited and quite boring, the actual racing is not.
You can earn 6 gears for each race (required to unlock more races) - there's usually 3 for winning the event and 3 additional ones for performing some other feats during the race (destroying 10 obstructions, not using boost, using all shortcuts, not using shortcuts, completing the race in a specific time, etc.). Those are not always easy and I found myself repeating some races only to unlock all of them.
Winning races also grants you some upgrades for your cars to improve speed, boost, handling and other stats. Each type of car has different base stats so you need to pick the right upgrades to make the car better. Sometimes when you choose a wrong type of upgrade you can actually lower the stats of your car, so you have to be careful about that.
Some races are limited to one car class, but you can also run in open races where all three classes drive together and you have to select the right car to win (or pick the one that can grant you an additional gear bonus).
DLC
There are two DLCs.
One is free and introduces new tracks in a snow-themed environment. Unfortunately in career mode they are only available in Veteran seasons two and three. That means you have to complete seven other seasons before you get to them. That was too much for me and I didn't get that far, so not much I can say about them.
The second one (2.99€) introduces an elite class of cars that hover above the ground, making them less affected by the tracks' surface. They come with a stand-alone career campaign. One that I also did not play, so again, cannot comment on them.
Conclusion
It's a fun little game. Nothing special, but also not too bad.
The limited number of tracks gets boring pretty fast, but the driving is good enough to make you want to play just one more race (while listening to a good soundtrack).
Pros
- strong one-more-race syndrome
- good soundtrack
- some Death Rally nostalgia
Cons
- small number of tracks (with high re-use)
- slow pace of unlocks (both cars and tracks)
- UI and the menus could use some improvements
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DOPE GAME!
At first I thought it was horrible, because in the starter cars you can just race full-throtle the whole time and I hate that. However, I loaned out higher class cars and it was great. Now, my only gripe is the lack of tracks, about 10 total only. That can get stale quick. Otherwise the best top down racer I've ever played and some decent ones exist. The tracks are decent, some more bumps in the road with vibrating feedback would be cool and more hills up and down even. Will consider picking it up on sale, reasonable price.
8/10

In a time where racing cabinets lined the now mostly gone arcades, standing out from the rest with their replica seat and steering-wheel set-ups. Top-down racers like Super Sprint paved the way for a whole generation of multiplayer oriented racing that would later find its home on consoles in the form of legendary series like Super Off Road or Micro Machines. For such a memorable genre that had shaped the early experiences of many racing game players, it's disappointing to see its popularity waning in recent years. Mantis Burn Racing seeks to bring glory back to the genre with gorgeous modern visuals, pitch-perfect controls with a seriously weighty and realistic feel, bucketloads of content and all of the multiplayer and online features you could possibly need.
Mantis Burn Racing is much more than your usual top-down racer, though. With at least 8 different modes including your usual racing across a sprawling progressive campaign, there's enough content here to rival your typical AAA racing title. There's everything from Elimination rounds to adrenaline pumping Overtake matches, and of course self-testing Time Trials for a little less chaos. The two locales the numerous variations of tracks take place across are gorgeously detailed and realistic, a sandy desert filled with plenty of dunes to jump and winding city streets of a metropolis set the stage for a diverse set of complex and intense races.
It didn't even matter when the setting stayed the same, because each track was so wildly different from the last. Each level throws new tricks, new twists and turns, and more beautifully rendered scenery to look at. Hitting jumps over winding rivers and drifting under the flowing waterfalls, each stage of the campaign offered something new both in gameplay and incredible setpieces.The switches from the bright and warm daytimes of the desert to the cool and dim visuals of the city night sky make you feel like you're playing an almost entirely different game, and give a seriously genuine atmosphere for all kinds of drivers. Visually, Mantis Burn Racing sets a new precedent for top-down racing, and hopefully this is enough to give the genre its much needed comeback.
This is a classic arcade racer in every sense, including difficulty. It eases you in with relaxing rides and helpful upgrades, but soon in the campaign you'll need fast reflexes and quick maneuvering. Mistakes are not recoverable, so having your wits about you at all moments is mandatory. Slamming into a boulder or a barricade will bring your vehicle to a full stop usually, and leave you in the dust only able to watch the competition whizz by. With three distinct car classes and various skill tiers throughout the campaign, I was already repeating races for upgrade points on Rookie. It's challenging and demands lots of practice, but Mantis Burn Racing is also very customizable and has a whole lot of variety to keep your options open and your practices interesting as you pave your way to professional driving and drifting.
The key to winning in Mantis Burn Racing is slick and tricky driving. As you pull off each drift, each jump, draft and overtake your boost meter rises, pushing you to drive stylishly. When the meter is filled your nitrous boost is ready, and when used with proper timing can propel you past the competition in a heartbeat. Attempting to drive with skill is an addictive process, it takes time but the feeling of driving in Mantis Burn Racing is so good, so slick and precise that practicing is nothing short of pure pleasure and adrenaline.