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What is Micro Machines World Series?
Skidding across snooker tables, bashing into garden gnomes, and leaping over cornflakes, Micro Machines World Series is a miniature racing game starring everyone's favourite diddy cars. With four player same-console multiplayer support, overpowered weapons, narrow tabletop courses to navigate, and a great variety of lightweight vehicles, from dumper trucks and fire engines, to tanks and police cars to get to grips with, Micro Machines is a household race for victory.
How do you play Micro Machines World Series?
Micro Machines is a game that's been designed with multiplayer fun in mind. With support for up to twelve players online, or four players offline on the same console, Micro Machines pits you against friends, strangers, and computer controlled cars alike as you jostle for position. While you can play one off races on your own, there's actually no career mode or anything similar here, as Micro Machines is so focussed on multiplayer action.
After choosing from one of twelve themed vehicles, you'll face off against anywhere from four, to twelve other racers (depending on mode) in one of three different game types - either standard races, objective based battles, or elimination mode. Battle mode divides up to 12 players into two teams to play capture the flag (nick a flag, take it back to your base), or bomb battle (kind of an inverse capture the flag - deliver a bomb to the enemy base), while elimination sees you take part in a race where the camera follows the person in first place - drop too far behind, and you'll be deleted. Standard races though are always popular, as you dodge baked beans and bolts alike to burn rubber across the tabletops.
How easy is Micro Machines World Series to pick up and play?
In terms of accessibility, Micro Machines has more of a learning curve than you might imagine. With a fixed camera perspective, learning how to steer your car can take a bit of getting used to for new players, as you'll need to take into account whether you're heading into the screen, or coming away from it. When playing online especially, the narrow courses can often get very crowded, with the lightweight cars only needing a slight knock to send them careering off course - or over the edge.
Outside of the controls, though, most of the game's difficulty comes from the people you'll be facing off against. Local multiplayer arguably offers the easiest races, as not only can you turn off the computer controlled opponents for a pure family/friends race, but those you're playing against will likely be pretty similarly skilled to you. Conversely, in single player, you'll face off against up to six AI opponents, who can often provide a heck of a solid challenge - and with no adjustable difficulty level, they can be a pretty tough cookie to crack. Online, you'll often find yourself going head to head with a mixture of computer controlled and human opponents. Although the game does award players a level depending on their experience, the online mode doesn't stream you by ability, meaning you'll sometimes find yourself going up against players with much, much more experience than you (giving you the opportunity to take them down if you're good enough) - and even then, the computer controlled players can often beat everyone!
Additional Notes
- Most of the replay value in Micro Machines comes from winning race, earning experience, and levelling up, which in turn will let you unlock "loot crates", each containing four cosmetic items you can use to customise your racers. However, you only earn experience for races you do online - offline, whether in single player or local multiplayer doesn't count. As such, while a Playstation Plus/Xbox Live subscription isn't required, it's certainly recommended.
In terms of mature content, there's little to speak about in Micro Machines, with nothing in the way of bad language, violence, or sex. While you can use weapons from a matchstick cannon to a kind of hammer to take on your opponents, enemy cars simply explode and then reappear when defeated, while you're never shown anyone actually driving the cars.
Parents may want to be aware, though, that the one level does feature a ouija board, with the pointer moving around of its own accord, often knocking racers off track.
Age Ratings
Format Reviewed: Playstation 4
