Should have been so much more.
Everyone and their brother knows about Overwatch at this point. The Blizzard juggernaut has really made an impact on the game industry as a whole, and for good reason. Now, showing my age here, I remember old school Micro Machines as a kid complete with the fast talking announcer from the commercials. There’s been multiple games spanning retro consoles to modern day gaming and the newest one tries to hit a specific mark. I mentioned Overwatch earlier. What if I told you the newest Micro Machines game takes the top-down perspective of the previous games and added in a class-based structure seen in games like Overwatch? Sounds interesting, right? Well, it works and works well, but unfortunately, no one is actually playing it.
Micro Machines: World Series takes a class based approach to the game when it comes to specific modes. There’s the standard racing mode that plays a lot like a top down Mario Kart game where players can run over items on the track that give the vehicle weapons made by NERF, of course. Hindering and knocking the enemy cars off the tracks made out to look like a 1980’s kid’s room is the main part of this mode. Players can’t really race their way to victory. They must utilize the weapons they can obtain.
Platforms: XB1, PS4, PC
MSRP: $29.99
Price I’d pay: $10
The second and more predominate mode are the objective-based modes that really play a lot like Overwatch in certain aspects. Each vehicle has a role to play with their very own abilities that have cool downs. There are the sustained damage dealers, the healers and support vehicles, and even specialized vehicles that can play as blockers and tanks. This mode has teams trying to capture control points or capturing flags in order to win. It takes come coordination and skill to be successful in this mode and playing as a team is very important.
That’s where the game takes a nose dive. Due to the nature of the game itself, players really need a team to play with. Since this is a versus only game, it will usually try to find a match with other players, but nine times out of ten, I would end up finding a game with only one other player and the rest were controlled by the AI. While the AI is competent by themselves, they don’t play as a team. This results in a capture the flag game where no team ever captures the flag because every AI teammate is off doing their own thing. It quickly becomes frustrating.
More comparisons to Overwatch, the player’s profile levels up and unlocks loot boxes that can have different skins, voice lines, and even death sprays that can be equipped to the character of their choice, and there’s a ton here to unlock too.
The handling of the vehicles is also well done. That’s the thing about this game, everything as a whole works really well, but when paired up to some pretty dumb AI partners, it becomes a slog to even get through a single event. The racing is the best part of the game and even then, there’s not much to go on from there.
World Series has tons of potential. It controls well, has some really great ideas, and even has an addicting formula that would keep players coming back for more. The issue is that this game lives and breathes by the player based and right out the gate, there’s no one to play with forcing players to then play with the AI which is just not fun at all. I would suggest this game only to people that have a group of friends that are all on board in getting it to play with. Until then, I’d wait for a significant price drop and even then, just know that when you do get it, you will more than likely be playing by yourself.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.