"If only the controls were better..."

Take Lego. Now take Mario Kart. Now mash them together, and you get a general idea as to what the game is about. Lego Racers is a decent Mario Kart clone with the added ability to build your own cars out of the conventional (and unconventional) Lego blocks.

The goal of this game is to come in first place overall in each cup. Each of the cups are hosted by various characters that you will race against. If you complete the cup, you open up a more difficult cup AND get a new brick set that was used to make the host's car. So, winning means opening more tracks and getting more pieces to build your car with.

This is not a bad game. In fact, it's a pretty good one. The car building system is really cool. The race tracks are neat and original, each with secret passages available to open (one problem with the tracks however: In later cups, most tracks are reused, but they are mirrored. That is, left turns are now right turns, and so on). The sound effects and music are pretty good. Even the graphics are pretty good (but how bad could they get? They're Legos...).

The biggest downsides to this game are the controls and the multiplayer mode.

The problem with the controls is not the layout, but the preciseness of them. They can, at times, seem rather sluggish. However, one can get around this problem by just playing the game more, thus gaining the ability to predict what the car will do when steering.

The Multiplayer mode sucks. I hate it. First off, you can only have two players. Second, the split screen window seems to make the game much more difficult or restrained than it should be. You can change the camera views, but it didn't seem to help much.

I conclusion, I would recommend this game as one you should try before buying. Seeing as you can't rent N64 games in most places today, borrow it from a friend.
If no one you know has it, you could probably pick it up for a few dollars, and that's not a bad deal for this game.

So, I give this game and 8 out of 10. Good game, weak controls, irritating multiplayer.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/23/05