UNDERRATED EXPLOSIONS EXTRAORDINAIRE
Another combat-oriented racing game—right. I’ve been down this road before. This time, however, I didn’t travel alone. I brought my younger brother, and I’m happy to report that as long as you stick to the frantic multiplayer, the aptly titled Obliteracers delivers pure arcade mayhem. It occupies the same niche as racers I’ve reviewed before—BlazeRush and Table Top Racing: World Tour—both of which left me underwhelmed. The key difference is that I never played those with friends or family.
Developed by Space Dust Studios, Obliteracers is built around the idea of gathering people around the TV and diving into fast, easily digestible competition. It supports up to sixteen players on a single screen, which sounds absurd—and occasionally is—but it works. My brother and I have spent countless hours on the limited selection of tracks, mainly competing in the “Endurance” mode with a handful of AI-controlled cannon fodder thrown in, all in pursuit of crowning the family racing champion (spoiler: it isn’t me).
We’ve cheered, laughed and raged so much that I could easily have awarded the game half a star more—had I not also finished the single-player “campaign,” against my brother’s advice. Doing so only highlighted how shockingly thin the game is in content. Obliteracers is a party game, and friends are clearly part of the package. Without them, the experience feels hollow.
There are only four tracks, set in tropical, desert, naval and futuristic metropolitan environments. These double to eight if you count the option to race them in reverse. Add a few weather conditions that affect traction and a handful of game modes, and you can squeeze some variation out of the experience—but not much.
Winning isn’t about crossing the finish line first; it’s about survival. You obliterate your opponents by any means necessary. Cars can be rammed off the track, and anyone who falls too far behind the leader simply explodes. The most effective tools, however, are the weapon pickups scattered around the courses. Rockets, missiles and chain guns are ideal when you’re trailing. Flamethrowers, force blasts and charged orbs shine in close quarters. Mines and grease slicks are best deployed by whoever’s in the lead.
My preferred mode, “Endurance,” allows you to respawn after a few seconds, with the first driver to rack up enough kills winning the match. “Knockout” removes respawns entirely: once a single driver remains, the race resets until someone reaches the required number of kills. “Survival” follows the same rules, but only the last driver standing scores a point. Finally, “Leader” awards all points to whoever is in first place, regardless of who caused the destruction. These modes force small but meaningful tactical adjustments, balancing aggression, defense, driving skill and aim.
The tracks themselves are varied and encourage improvisation, particularly when it comes to placing mines or grease strategically. Each course features its own hazards—crossing traffic, bombs, ramps, jumps and debris—and their layouts range from flat stretches to near-rollercoaster chaos. With so many ways to score points, I occasionally found myself wondering how the game prioritizes credit. If I shove an opponent into someone else’s grease slick and they fly off the track, who gets the kill?
I suspect the scoring system is fair overall, and any ambiguities even out during longer “Endurance” sessions. If someone wins by a wide margin, a questionable point or two hardly matters. The camera is flexible enough to keep the action readable, and you can activate a defensive shield at any time—at the cost of losing your currently held weapon.
The simple control scheme pairs well with the physics-heavy gameplay. Some slippery surfaces feel illogical given that many vehicles are hovercars, but that inconsistency fits the game’s tongue-in-cheek tone. The drivers themselves—cartoon animals and robotic oddities—are packed with instant personality. Try firing without a weapon equipped and they’ll taunt each other in amusing alien gibberish instead.
Despite the constant violence, Obliteracers is oddly disarming. Even when tempers flare, it’s hard to stay genuinely angry at a game filled with expressive characters and upbeat music. It’s like a kitten attacking your feet: mildly painful, but clearly playful. That’s simply its nature, and by playing along, you accept the terms.
All you can really do is “be better,” to borrow a phrase from Kratos. The game evokes the arcade mentality of the 1980s, when good games were played repeatedly because new ones were hard to come by. That Obliteracers still finds its way into our rotation amid a constant flood of new releases is a testament to its infectious, good-natured fun.
It’s frustrating to realize that had I judged Obliteracers solely by its campaign, I might have given it the same lukewarm two-star rating as similar titles. Instead, it earns three-and-a-half stars for multiplayer brilliance and two fading stars for single-player mediocrity. I round it down to three, because the joy of multiplayer far outweighs the shortcomings elsewhere. Math doesn’t always apply to video game criticism—just as physics rarely make sense in Obliteracers—and that, too, is part of its playful charm.
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