Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2021/01/06/antz-extreme-racing-2002-ps2-xbox-pc-review/
Someone out there thought it was a good idea to release an Antz game in 2002, a whopping 4 years after the movie came out.
If it isn’t obvious from the title and box art, Antz Extreme Racing is a kart racing game based on the film Antz. Original idea, I know. Now you might be asking yourself, “Why are you reviewing a shitty 18 year old video game based on a movie that people only talk about when someone goes ‘Hey, do you remember Antz?'” I have a lot of free time, and very little in the way of dignity.
And to make matters worse, it doesn’t even take advantage of the large time span between the films theatrical release and the game’s release date by having a more polished game. If this was rushed out to come out as the same time as the theatrical or even VHS release for the film, the game being a kart racer would make a lot more sense, or at least a more more excusable as to how and why it ended up the way it did, but somehow this game ended up on the XBOX and PS2, 4 years and a whole console generation later.
It’s not the worst looking game that I’ve seen on the PlayStation 2 and Xbox and the characters do look like their movie counterparts, despite their faces having the exact same facial expression the whole game. Plus it carries of the art style of the movie well enough. But that feels like I’m reaching for compliments when I’m talking about the graphics, which I am.
I’m going to make a comparison to another obvious cash grab, “Disney’s Extreme Skateboarding”, to make a point. That game is literally just the gameplay from Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 but with a Disney and Pixar coat of paint to promote the movies that were big at the time. But the team that developed the game clearly knew that they were making a game that was just a promotional tool, so they jumped on the back on the gameplay of another game to do the heavy work for them, and it ended up being a competent game despite the fact that it was obviously an advertisement. Antz Extreme Racing doesn’t even do that and ends up being a lazily put together cash grab that’s somehow late to promoting it’s own film.
Antz Extreme racing doesn’t even have voice clips from the movie for it’s characters. Not even sound-alikes, something which even Disney’s Extreme Skateboarding did. When you’re getting one-upped by Disney’s Extreme Skateboarding, it’s time to call it quits.
And unlike the game that it’s trying to ape off of, Mario Kart, Antz didn’t exactly have a lot of characters to pick from, and it’s pretty obvious from the fact that the game has 6 total characters to pick from, with 4 of them being unlockables. And what’s annoying is that the game doesn’t even have the two wasp characters from the movie, which could have added some more variety and visual flair, and at least would have padded out the roster to an acceptable amount, despite the fact that one of them is even on the cover of the game. As a result, the game is filled with samey looking characters. And to bring up Disney’s Extreme Skateboarding again, that game has characters with a variety of visually different looking characters, even the ones from the same movie. I would have even loved to see someone like Barbados as an unlockable character.
And to top it all off, the driving is pretty bad. The one thing that had to be good, and it ended up being awful. Everything feels so slippery. It’s unnecessarily difficult to turn corners. And if you collide with something, it can accidentally turn you around, and the slippery controls make it hard to get back in the right direction. Half the time I had to restart a race because I got so turned around. To compound the problem, some of the tracks have incredibly tight turns, meaning that you’re either going to find yourself driving off the track or hitting a wall and finding yourself a few positions behind where you were.
And yes, I know it’s the game and not me because even the AI has trouble with the driving at times. I know this is a game aimed at kids, and they don’t have high expectations, but I feel like something as simple as a kart racer shouldn’t have controls this bad.
The game at least tries to have some variety in it’s gameplay by having multiple different types of races. But for some reason, the game changes the controls depending of the type of race you pick. The first type of race is using the standard kart vehicle. The second type of race has you running on foot. The final type of race, which is a time trial where you have to make it through flag gates without missing them five times, with every time you miss them, the game adds time to your total time at the end of the race.
But for some reason, the developers thought it was a good idea to completely switch up the controls depending on the race. If you’re driving a vehicle, you use the right trigger to accelerate, but if you’re running on foot, or “snowboarding”, you have to use up on the D-Pad to accelerate. I have absolutely no idea why the developers decided to do this. Why not just make the controls the same across the board. It’s not like each race is so drastically different from each other that it needed to be changed.
Which is annoying, because there are some neat course designs, such as a course where a giant kid is stomping around and you having to avoid his feet. If I didn’t have to worry about constantly crashing due to the slippery controls, I could have enjoyed this game at least to some degree, even if only for it being a Mario Kart knockoff.
Each racer has their own career, which is being generous to call it a career. While there is a lot of overlap with the tracks in between the racers, but the tracks usually try to have something different going on, such as different weather like sunshine or fog, or reverse it. While it does it’s best to try and break up the monotony, it all still feels very samey. Even the racers cars show some level of creativity, such as either a kart being made out of rubbish left on the ground by people or is a bug that they ride.
However, the game’s final race is the the exact same with every single racer, where you race another one of the racers up a mound in the middle of the ant hill. This final track even has platforming, which is made doubly worse with the fact that you’re constantly doing tight turns, on top of the slippery driving. Surprisingly, it’s one of the easier races, and I always beat it on the second or third try at most.
And just like every other Mario Kart clone, there are several power ups that you can collect during a race. There are the usual power-ups where you can leave something on the track for a racer to accidentally hit, or something to fire at another racer. The worst power-up is the speed power-up, which is just completely useless. Not because it doesn’t give you a decent boost, but because just how poorly the driving is. By the time you could have used it, you’ve probably accidentally picked up another power-up that’s more useful.
The game does come with some unlockables, all of which are located under the “Secrets” menu.
The best one is “Infinite Missiles”. Which at least makes the races slightly more fun, but just barely. Another one is “Time Change”, which just turns the current track that you’re playing from day to night. I don't know why this isn't just an option when picking tracks outside of the "campaign".
There’s also “Wobble Cam”, which turns the camera 360 degrees in the direction that you’re turning, “Freaky Vision”, which just makes the screen blurrier, and “Speedy Play”, which makes the race faster, making it more difficult to turn. All three make the game more unplayable. But hey, it's neat that they're here.
And finally, there is “Select-a-car”. This one has to be the most confusingly implemented extra. Instead of bringing up a menu where you can select a car like any other racer with cars that you can unlock during the Career Mode, you have to unlock the “Select-a-car” mode. And instead of letting you pick a car like any other racer, when you pick one of the races in the Single Player mode, you have to hit up or down on the D-Pad to select the vehicle race order, which instead of just changing the car, you get switched to whichever place the other racer was.
This is so poorly implemented that I had no idea what I was doing the first time I tried it.
Surprisingly, the game came out on the PC, PlayStation 2, and XBOX, but not the Gamecube. Maybe the developers knew that it couldn’t compete with the Mario Kart franchise, so they didn’t even try. But it still came out on the same consoles that several Crash Team Racing games came out on, so there were still better kart games that came out on those platforms. But it still got a Gameboy Advance port, and that version was alright, so there’s that.
Hilariously, the game can be played in four-player split-screen multiplayer. I want to know what kid tried to convince their friends to play Antz Extreme Racing over literally any other racing or party game. There has to be that one kid, right?
Antz Extreme Racing might not be the worst licensed video game, as low as that bar is, but that doesn’t stop it from being yet another bad licensed video game in the every growing pile of bad licenced video games. This wasn’t even the best licensed kart game at the time, with Mickey’s Speedway USA being released on the Nintendo 64 the year before, and Shrek: Swamp Kart Speedway coming out the same year on the Gameboy Advance. Even the GBA got a version of this game which was at least a step up over this game.
Imagine being third place to a Mickey Mouse and Shrek.
If there’s a moral to this review, it’s don’t waste your time playing awful video games that no one has heard of. You only have so much time to live, go out and do something with your life.
Someone out there thought it was a good idea to release an Antz game in 2002, a whopping 4 years after the movie came out.
If it isn’t obvious from the title and box art, Antz Extreme Racing is a kart racing game based on the film Antz. Original idea, I know. Now you might be asking yourself, “Why are you reviewing a shitty 18 year old video game based on a movie that people only talk about when someone goes ‘Hey, do you remember Antz?'” I have a lot of free time, and very little in the way of dignity.
And to make matters worse, it doesn’t even take advantage of the large time span between the films theatrical release and the game’s release date by having a more polished game. If this was rushed out to come out as the same time as the theatrical or even VHS release for the film, the game being a kart racer would make a lot more sense, or at least a more more excusable as to how and why it ended up the way it did, but somehow this game ended up on the XBOX and PS2, 4 years and a whole console generation later.
It’s not the worst looking game that I’ve seen on the PlayStation 2 and Xbox and the characters do look like their movie counterparts, despite their faces having the exact same facial expression the whole game. Plus it carries of the art style of the movie well enough. But that feels like I’m reaching for compliments when I’m talking about the graphics, which I am.
I’m going to make a comparison to another obvious cash grab, “Disney’s Extreme Skateboarding”, to make a point. That game is literally just the gameplay from Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 but with a Disney and Pixar coat of paint to promote the movies that were big at the time. But the team that developed the game clearly knew that they were making a game that was just a promotional tool, so they jumped on the back on the gameplay of another game to do the heavy work for them, and it ended up being a competent game despite the fact that it was obviously an advertisement. Antz Extreme Racing doesn’t even do that and ends up being a lazily put together cash grab that’s somehow late to promoting it’s own film.
Antz Extreme racing doesn’t even have voice clips from the movie for it’s characters. Not even sound-alikes, something which even Disney’s Extreme Skateboarding did. When you’re getting one-upped by Disney’s Extreme Skateboarding, it’s time to call it quits.
And unlike the game that it’s trying to ape off of, Mario Kart, Antz didn’t exactly have a lot of characters to pick from, and it’s pretty obvious from the fact that the game has 6 total characters to pick from, with 4 of them being unlockables. And what’s annoying is that the game doesn’t even have the two wasp characters from the movie, which could have added some more variety and visual flair, and at least would have padded out the roster to an acceptable amount, despite the fact that one of them is even on the cover of the game. As a result, the game is filled with samey looking characters. And to bring up Disney’s Extreme Skateboarding again, that game has characters with a variety of visually different looking characters, even the ones from the same movie. I would have even loved to see someone like Barbados as an unlockable character.
And to top it all off, the driving is pretty bad. The one thing that had to be good, and it ended up being awful. Everything feels so slippery. It’s unnecessarily difficult to turn corners. And if you collide with something, it can accidentally turn you around, and the slippery controls make it hard to get back in the right direction. Half the time I had to restart a race because I got so turned around. To compound the problem, some of the tracks have incredibly tight turns, meaning that you’re either going to find yourself driving off the track or hitting a wall and finding yourself a few positions behind where you were.
And yes, I know it’s the game and not me because even the AI has trouble with the driving at times. I know this is a game aimed at kids, and they don’t have high expectations, but I feel like something as simple as a kart racer shouldn’t have controls this bad.
The game at least tries to have some variety in it’s gameplay by having multiple different types of races. But for some reason, the game changes the controls depending of the type of race you pick. The first type of race is using the standard kart vehicle. The second type of race has you running on foot. The final type of race, which is a time trial where you have to make it through flag gates without missing them five times, with every time you miss them, the game adds time to your total time at the end of the race.
But for some reason, the developers thought it was a good idea to completely switch up the controls depending on the race. If you’re driving a vehicle, you use the right trigger to accelerate, but if you’re running on foot, or “snowboarding”, you have to use up on the D-Pad to accelerate. I have absolutely no idea why the developers decided to do this. Why not just make the controls the same across the board. It’s not like each race is so drastically different from each other that it needed to be changed.
Which is annoying, because there are some neat course designs, such as a course where a giant kid is stomping around and you having to avoid his feet. If I didn’t have to worry about constantly crashing due to the slippery controls, I could have enjoyed this game at least to some degree, even if only for it being a Mario Kart knockoff.
Each racer has their own career, which is being generous to call it a career. While there is a lot of overlap with the tracks in between the racers, but the tracks usually try to have something different going on, such as different weather like sunshine or fog, or reverse it. While it does it’s best to try and break up the monotony, it all still feels very samey. Even the racers cars show some level of creativity, such as either a kart being made out of rubbish left on the ground by people or is a bug that they ride.
However, the game’s final race is the the exact same with every single racer, where you race another one of the racers up a mound in the middle of the ant hill. This final track even has platforming, which is made doubly worse with the fact that you’re constantly doing tight turns, on top of the slippery driving. Surprisingly, it’s one of the easier races, and I always beat it on the second or third try at most.
And just like every other Mario Kart clone, there are several power ups that you can collect during a race. There are the usual power-ups where you can leave something on the track for a racer to accidentally hit, or something to fire at another racer. The worst power-up is the speed power-up, which is just completely useless. Not because it doesn’t give you a decent boost, but because just how poorly the driving is. By the time you could have used it, you’ve probably accidentally picked up another power-up that’s more useful.
The game does come with some unlockables, all of which are located under the “Secrets” menu.
The best one is “Infinite Missiles”. Which at least makes the races slightly more fun, but just barely. Another one is “Time Change”, which just turns the current track that you’re playing from day to night. I don't know why this isn't just an option when picking tracks outside of the "campaign".
There’s also “Wobble Cam”, which turns the camera 360 degrees in the direction that you’re turning, “Freaky Vision”, which just makes the screen blurrier, and “Speedy Play”, which makes the race faster, making it more difficult to turn. All three make the game more unplayable. But hey, it's neat that they're here.
And finally, there is “Select-a-car”. This one has to be the most confusingly implemented extra. Instead of bringing up a menu where you can select a car like any other racer with cars that you can unlock during the Career Mode, you have to unlock the “Select-a-car” mode. And instead of letting you pick a car like any other racer, when you pick one of the races in the Single Player mode, you have to hit up or down on the D-Pad to select the vehicle race order, which instead of just changing the car, you get switched to whichever place the other racer was.
This is so poorly implemented that I had no idea what I was doing the first time I tried it.
Surprisingly, the game came out on the PC, PlayStation 2, and XBOX, but not the Gamecube. Maybe the developers knew that it couldn’t compete with the Mario Kart franchise, so they didn’t even try. But it still came out on the same consoles that several Crash Team Racing games came out on, so there were still better kart games that came out on those platforms. But it still got a Gameboy Advance port, and that version was alright, so there’s that.
Hilariously, the game can be played in four-player split-screen multiplayer. I want to know what kid tried to convince their friends to play Antz Extreme Racing over literally any other racing or party game. There has to be that one kid, right?
Antz Extreme Racing might not be the worst licensed video game, as low as that bar is, but that doesn’t stop it from being yet another bad licensed video game in the every growing pile of bad licenced video games. This wasn’t even the best licensed kart game at the time, with Mickey’s Speedway USA being released on the Nintendo 64 the year before, and Shrek: Swamp Kart Speedway coming out the same year on the Gameboy Advance. Even the GBA got a version of this game which was at least a step up over this game.
Imagine being third place to a Mickey Mouse and Shrek.
If there’s a moral to this review, it’s don’t waste your time playing awful video games that no one has heard of. You only have so much time to live, go out and do something with your life.