While you can set up local matches with the AI, it’s clear that Micro Machines is gunning more for the position of ‘beloved modest multiplayer standby’, and though I’m not one to hold a grudge against a game for forcing me to play with the other kids in the schoolyard, the least it could do is let me be a bit more choosy. You can probably deduce from this that my hopes of a substantial single-player mode have gone up in exhaust fumes, and you’d be bang on. It all feels just a little too familiar, although without the looming presence of microtransactions, the system seems to be largely in place just to provide some semblance of a progression structure. Playing online matches lets you level up, levelling up gets you loot boxes, and loot boxes get you four randomly selected cosmetics each, with in-game currency as compensation for duplicates. Many of your choices of wheels are decidedly exotic-a dump truck, a snowcat, a hovercraft, a knock-off Bond-esque Aston Martin-but for the purposes of racing, their differences are more or less skin-deep.
Rather than everyone racing recoloured versions of the same vehicle around an appropriately themed track, there’s now a roster of a dozen distinct characters, each with their own personal transportation, tiered skins, taunts, and international accents of, uh… variable convincingness.
That’s maybe jumping the gun a bit, but it certainly gives you an idea of where a lot of the modern design conventions in this new instalment probably came from.
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