Shrek Swamp Kart Speedway

"This game gets the score it deserves!"

Shrek Swamp Kart Speedway (from here on known as Shrek Kart) is one of the worst games I have ever played in my entire life. With that said, I think you can assume that I don’t think to highly of this game. In this review, I will make some comparisons to Mario Kart Super Circuit, because it is apparent that this game is a blatant rip off of that game (and when I say rip off, I mean TDK should be sued for this game for making this game). The major difference between Mario Kart and Shrek Kart is that Mario Kart actually had a very good presentation. This game simply takes EVERY aspect of Mario Kart and takes them down a few notches. In this review, I will talk about the graphics, the story, the music/sound, and the game play for this beast of a game.

Graphics (2/10)
The graphics in Shrek Kart are very uninspired. The title screen has the best graphics of the entire game and even they are below par. The levels and characters are very poorly colored in and everything in the game is very hard to distinguish. A turn will come up right on you and you wont realize it because the graphics are so blocky looking that you wont be able to make it out. There is absolutely no detail in the character sprites either. The three blind mice characters look like some three headed monster because there is no detail or boundary set between their heads to help you to distinguish between them. The three turtle shells..er pumpkins (I think that’s what they are anyways) that you throw out at other Kart players just disappear into the vast blockyness that is the levels. The mode 7 in this game is worse than that of Super Mario Kart for the SNES. I have trouble understanding how they pulled that one off since Super Mario Kart came out like 10 to 12 years ago. All in all, the graphics are horrible for this game.

Story (--/10)
You are Shrek or one of eight other characters who are racing against one another for some unknown reason. I can’t take points off for Shrek Kart having no story since a lot of racing games don’t have storylines.

Music (1/10)

Music and sound are terrible in this game. The music has hardly any distinguishable melodies in it and sounds more muffled than anything. The music sounds very reminiscent of the type of music you would hear for the ORIGINAL gameboy that came out in 1989 or so. What even hinders the music even more is that the sound effects are glaringly loud. Every time your character skids around a turn you have a horrible squealing tire sound played. The characters make “sounds” too which adds to the annoyance factor of the sounds even more. This game makes you wont to rip the audio device right out of your gameboy advance so that you’ll never have to hear the horrible sounds that that system is capable of having ever again.

Game play (0/10) (not a typo)
How do you give something a zero out of ten? Normally a game at least deserves a 1 or 2 out of 10 for the effort of the developers, right?? WRONG! Shrek Kart rips off of Mario Kart in every game play aspect imaginable to man. By all logic, that should make Shrek Kart a pretty good game right? You would think so, but Shrek Kart seems to take every aspect of Mario Kart down the lowest possible realm of bad gaming. Game play wise, the characters are ridiculously hard to handle. The handling of Mario Kart is great and responsive to the controller. That isn’t the case in this game. The characters are either to tight or to loose. There are item boxes in this game, except this time, they are called “spell books.” I have played this game for several hours and still am not sure what a lot of the items do. You can get a red hood which puts a red hood on your character for about 2 seconds, but above and beyond that, I have no clue what effects that has on the player. The game play also falls victim to the games terrible graphics. You wont be able to see spell books until they are right in front of you and will have a hard time maneuvering yourself to get one. A lot of times, you wont be able to tell whether a black spot coming up in the distance is a pit or a spell book. If its a pit, might as well start the race all over cause its very hard to catch up in Shrek Kart. Most of the items are useless and really no characters are good enough to catch you up without the use of items.


Overall: 1/10
DO NOT BUY THIS GAME! DO NOT RENT THIS GAME! DO NOT DOWNLOAD A ROM OF THIS GAME! This game is a complete waste of time, money, and/or space on your hard drive. Anyone who likes this game deserves… well… no one is going to like this game so I’m not going to say anything about it. PLAY AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 04/01/04