A Review: 3, 2, 1... Smurf! My First Racer, PSOne 2001

Hello and welcome. 

Today I will be adding a review for the game 3, 2, 1,... Smurf! My First Racer. 

A simple game, this one was originally released for the PlayStation One in 2001. However, through various online sources and an emulator, it can be played on home PCs.

 

3,2,1...Smurf! My First Racing Game is a kart racer developed by Artificial Mind And Movement and published by Infogrames, Inc in 2001. I found this game originally on the back page of a website that listed various ROMs and demo files for the old PlayStation One console. In all honesty, I'd never even heard of the game, nor did I even know that there was a kart racer using the Smurfs I.P. The gameplay is very simple and quite reminiscent of Mario Kart 64 and Diddy Kong Racing in terms of mechanics and features. The player takes control of a character and races around various tracks, with the ability to collect and use a mixture of power-ups.

I found this game to be a middle-of-the-road type of thing; nothing stood out as amazing, but nothing was all that terrible either. The play was simple and easy to get into; the characters were all easily recognizable, and the world looked pretty close to that of the old cartoons. It was very easy to navigate a few menus and then be dropped straight into some racing. However, that was also this game's problem, in my opinion; there was no real depth beyond the basic races and the few 'championships' on offer. You could easily sit for about an hour, or two at most, and have everything unlocked and this game completed. Now I fully understand that this game was marketed towards children; it even says 'from 3 up' on the box art. However, there is so little to do and unlock that there really isn't much for a more experienced player to get into. This is a game that I would see a mother with no gaming knowledge buying for her young son or daughter because of her own personal brand recognition. Only for the recipient of this game to play it to save face and then put it into storage to never see the light of day again. That's not to say that this game is terrible; it is just that there is very little to do once you get into it.

Visually, this game was quite basic at best. I would have expected much more vibrant colours for the backgrounds and items, but everything was dull and rather bland. The tracks were very, very basic and had little in the way of details or variations. This was also true of the background buildings and structures, and I thought it an odd choice to have taken, given the target audience. The karts were quite ugly, I thought, and had oddly shaped wheels and details. The best way I could sum up the graphics of this game was that it looked like something that had been developed for the N64, not the PlayStation One.

Overall, while not the worst game I have played in my time, it is certainly not the best, and it is very much an easily forgettable title.

5/10 – Okay!

Signed – Leonardo – PaulSJ

 

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