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I really didn't expect a lot from a game called LEGO Racers. After all, it's more of a children's title, and the previous LEGO game, LEGO Island, was not exactly a stunning title. (Stunningly mediocre, maybe.)

So I was pleasantly surprised when I threw LEGO Racers on my hard drive and found it to be an entirely workable and even fun racing game! Not a realistic racing game like Need for Speed: High Stakes or NASCAR Racing 1999 Edition, but more in the style of the Super NES and Nintendo 64 favorite, Mario Kart. Admittedly, it's not targeted at an adult audience, and a good number of our readers will likely find it a bit on the easy side. But if you've got kids, or know someone who does, read on to find out why this is one game they may actually enjoy. (Hell, it even made me smile!)

Gameplay is simplistic, which is good for a racer. You drive around the track, trying to complete three laps before the other cars do. Along the way, you collect powerup bricks, color coded for their effect. Red are forward-firing weapons, yellow are backward-firing weapons, blue are shields, and green are movement. Collecting up to three white bricks will increase the power of whatever colored brick you get. I tend to go out of my way to collect three whites and a green, which when used warps your racer a good distance ahead on the track. Each combination has its own uses, however, and experimenting is good to find out which combination works best for you.

Completing all the races in a circuit will net you a total score. If this score is at least second best out of the racers in that circuit, you unlock the next one. If it's the best, you unlock the next circuit and gain the blocks of that circuit's boss, which you can then use to customize your car further.

Ah yes, car customization. Here's where LEGO Racers takes a detour from the world of Mario Kart clones. You can arrange bricks around your car however you choose. More bricks means a heavier car, a higher top speed, but a slower acceleration. Fewer bricks means the opposite. Load down one side of your car too much and your handling won't be so good. The car customizing screen is handled well, except that you have to remove bricks in the order they were added, making it difficult to add conquered brick sets to your car without completely disassembling it.

The AI is a bit on the easy side, although they do tend to go for the good powerups (green) and push you into the bad powerups (blue). Older gamers will likely not have a problem scoring first on all the circuits after a few tries. This is unfortunate, since the multiplayer in LEGO Racers is a joke. It only supports split-screen play on the same computer. No modem, no LAN play, no Internet play. This and the "unlocking" required to move on to the later circuits reek of the dreaded CPS, or Console Port Syndrome.

However, I have to end this section on a cheery note, because the game is simply a lot of fun. It gets a point back for being one of the few titles enjoyable at almost any age.

A skilled player can get first place on all the tracks in about an hour. Afterwards, you're not going to get any more special rewards. However, seeing as how this game is just plain fun, you can jump in and race whenever, and tweak your car design to try to find the best racer for you. The lack of multiplayer beyond two-player split screen hurts the longevity of this game a lot, unfortunately.

The game is easily controllable with just a keyboard, using the arrow keys to maneuver and Enter to use powerups. However, if you want to splitscreen, you'll have to have a gamepad or joystick. I plugged in my trusty Gravis Gamepad Pro, and noticed a peculiarity in the default control setup...for some reason, the accelerate button was set to the "west" button, where traditionally in racers it's on the "south" button. The powerup control is on the "east" button, so it's difficult to thumb it while still hitting the accelerator. This is easily fixed in the options menu, but struck me as odd. Other than that, I don't have any complaints with the controls, they work as they should, and yes you can tell the difference in handling between different racer configurations, so go ahead and experiment with those blocks!

Psst, change your LEGO Racers shortcut to say:
"(your path here)\legoracers.exe" -horzres 1024 -vertres 768
replacing 1024 and 768 with your favorite resolution. The menus will look a little odd, but the race will be in full screen at that resolution! The screenshots for this review were taken at 1024x768 on a PII-450/TNT combo, which was not choppy whatsoever. Note that this option isn't officially supported, so if it doesn't work for you don't expect any help from Tech Support.

The game has a slew of different tracks, each with its own unique look. The main opponent in each circuit gets his own set of bricks, so his car looks different than the others (all of which look unique on their own, his just looks REALLY unique). Hitting an opponent with a weapon will cause him to lose a special brick, with an accompanying display of bricks falling off his racer. The game doesn't run choppy at all, even with the resolution cranked up. The graphics are a bit (OK, a lot) on the cartoony side. However, this game isn't trying to be Need for Speed, it's trying to be LEGO Racers, and it does an admirable job of displaying LEGO brick cars driving around. Some camera clipping occurs near the walls on some tracks, which is unfortunate and tends to distract from the game.

The music is pretty simplistic, sounding a lot like something that would come out of a console, and got repetitve fairly quickly for me. This isn't something the kids are likely to notice, but there's no reason to skimp on music if you don't have to. We've all got hardware wavetable now anyway, right?

The sound effects are done well for this style of game. The opponent cars yell as you pass them, and each weapon has its own sound effect. Again, this won't win any outstanding sound effects awards, but they're quite functional in the context of LEGO Racers.

Yawn...installs, plays, takes a paltry (for recent games) 110 megs to install, has the latest version of DirectX on the CD, blah blah blah. It works, it doesn't screw up.

As a mainstream racing title, LEGO Racers isn't likely to succeed. However, it's not a mainstream racing title, it's a children's racing title, and it'll do great for that purpose. Don't let the high price tag turn you off, this is a solid Mario Kart game for the PC that the youngins (target age group 6-12) are sure to enjoy. And who knows, it may even make you old folks smile too.