Mario Kart is fun, right? Well, at least Super Mario Kart, Mario Kart 64, and Mario Kart DS. The GameCube and Wii outings felt like they had lost their soul, turning races into roulette-style outings where the winner was determined by random power-ups. If you miss the good ole days of wacky races with your buds, Zero Gear is here to fill that void. Created by NimbleBit studios, the team behind a few of my favorite iPhone games, Zero Gear is a colorful casual online racing game with a decent sprinkling of power-ups, gameplay modes, and quirky gimmicks that keep you rolling back for more.
Zero Gear is a very casual game, meaning you can pretty much jump right into things and get your bearings within a moment or two. It also means the experience is less nuanced than you might like, so don’t expect learning to slide dash or tap the gas to round corners. It’s pretty much straight-up “hold the gas and go”, which isn’t as stale as that sentence makes it sound. The power-ups are creative, though somewhat limited in scope, and the different gameplay modes range from tag to football matches where you try and bump a ball into the goal to a Plinko-style pinball machine. You’ll have a big stupid grin on your face most of the time you’re playing, which is awesome.
Steam is offering both the demo and, for a few more days, free play of the full version, so download the game and see what I mean. I really want the concept to be fleshed out a bit more in the future with more power-ups, maps, race types — well, more of everything it has now. The multiplayer action is great, the cart customization is really fun, and the whole game is poised to be something grand.
