PAW Patrol: Grand Prix

PAW Patrol: Grand Prix
Basically, the Mario Kart Tour & Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing and Midnight Race Club: Supercharged! of PAW Patrol.
Genre(s): Racing Platform(s): PlayStation 4 Nintendo Switch PlayStation 5 Microsoft Windows Xbox One Xbox Serie X/S Release: September 30, 2022 Developer(s): 3DClouds Publisher(s): Outright Games (WW) Phoenixx (JP) Country: United States Series: PAW Patrol Predecessor: PAW Patrol The Movie: Adventure City Calls (by release date) Successor: PAW Patrol World (by release date)

PAW Patrol: Grand Prix is a kart racing video game developed by 3DClouds and published by Outright Games. It is based on the children's television series PAW Patrol, and was released on September 30, 2022, for Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Stadia, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S. Its racing gameplay is similar to Mario Kart and Crash Team Racing.

Gameplay

The gameplay consists of single or multiplayer battling and racing on different tracks in Adventure Bay, The Jungle, Jake's Snowboarding Resort, and Barkingburg. The game's playable characters include: Ryder, Chase, Marshall, Rubble, Rocky, Zuma, Skye, Everest, Tracker, and Rex. It also includes auto-acceleration for easier racing and a harder mode for experienced players.

Why It Loses The Grand Prix

1. The game is again, too easy, even for that of a kids game. Even if you set the game on the hardest difficulty, it will still be pathetically easy due to the game being slow.
   • All of the karts drive automatically. It is even possible to win a race without even touching the controller.
   • Far too many invisible walls, killing any sense of challenge once again.
2. The game is just a poor man's clone of Mario Kart, Crash Team Racing, and even Skylanders SuperChargers in a way, sharing almost identical-looking gameplay to the former two. While CTR originally started out as a clone of Mario Kart, it's at least becoming more original these days, but here, they just copied and pasted the gameplay of Mario Kart with almost no change whatsoever.
   • Rex's pup skill is a complete ripoff of one of the powerups from Skylanders SuperChargers' racing mode, which is later used for the racing mode in Skylanders Imaginators, showing how blatantly unoriginal this game is.
   • The Pup Treat Arena is just a blatant ripoff of the Coin Battle mode from Mario Kart Wii/7.
3. Annoying voice acting. While the pups finally do have voice acting in this game unlike the previous PAW Patrol games, they are incredibly annoying and irritating to listen to, especially Ryder. During races, they constantly repeat the same one-liners over and over again, most infamously Rubble with his "Rubble is on the double!" line. Sound familiar?
   • Speaking of which, the voice actors in this game are not the same ones from the TV series, which can be quite disappointing for those who wanted their original voice actors to reprise their roles in this game.
   • The voice acting in the British English version is even worse, as the characters sound nothing like their original selves, such as Rubble who sounds like a teenager/young adult rather than a kid. This is shown in Poofesure's video where he set the language to British English and played as him.
   • Ryder, like all of the other games, reads out every single selection the player makes, which can get annoying really fast.
4. The graphics are again, mediocre, especially for a 2023 game despite being accurate to the show. In fact, they look more like a 2010 Wii/PS3/Xbox 360 game rather than a game released for current-gen consoles.
5. Generic soundtrack, especially for that of a racing game. Even more generic than the TV series that it's based on, or even some other PAW Patrol games.
6. Adding on to WINAGP#2, due to the gameplay being incredibly slow, it will get boring really quickly and will only be fun for about 2 minutes.
7. No shortcuts, which is unacceptable for a kart-racer. Games like Mario Kart, Crash Team Racing, and even the aforementioned Skylanders game have plenty of shortcuts.
8. The controls are really poor, especially when turning. If you need to make a turn, you are pretty much forced to drift, where your kart comes to an almost screeching halt. If you try to turn regularly without drifting, however, it is very stiff.
   • Speaking of the controls, all of the pups control the same way, even sharing the same animations as one another despite having different skills/powerups, making them reskins.
9. Despite the game appearing to have some sort of "story mode" called Adventure, there is no actual story, as it's just the pups competing to win the Pup Cup.
   • Despite Mayor Humdinger (the main villain of the TV series) appearing in the game, he does not seem to pose a challenge or threat to you whatsoever, and he is usually only heard in the background.
10. The tracks are lazily named and designed, as they all feel empty and do not feel that different from one another, such as Speedway and Speedway Jr., and another track called "Pups on the Icy Road", which sounds like an episode taken straight from the TV series. While faithful, it is not an excuse for the developers to be lazy. They are also not capitalized properly either.
11. The cutscenes are also lazily made, as it's just stock renders of the characters talking with some text, with a background for the track they're about to race on much like Sonic Free Riders. Though thankfully there is voice acting. Even its predecessor had animated cutscenes.
12. The game is very short. Can simply be beaten in about an hour in a regular playthrough, and around 30-40 minutes if you want to speedrun, regardless of the difficulty, due to the lack of the content the game has.
13. It is somewhat overpriced, costing $29.99 USD on all platforms, with the previous PAW Patrol games (such as On a Roll) also costing this much, despite that game not having enough content to justify said price tag. With this price, you could be buying a better quality kart-racer for much cheaper or sometimes for free, such as TrackMania. Or you could just buy any Mario Kart game for that matter, with the exception of Mario Kart Tour.
14. The DLC is even more lazily put together than the base game, as there is nothing in it other than a few new tracks, which are all set in Barkingburg, with nothing new to unlock. It's pretty much a poor man's version of the Booster Course Pack from Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
15. Liberty is not a playable character in this game for some reason, despite appearing in the movie and the show. She could have been added in the Barkingburg DLC as an unlockable character but never was.
16. Due to how incredibly popular Nickelodeon's PAW Patrol franchise is with children, they along with Outright Games have milked the franchise to no end, thus making all of the PAW Patrol games (including this one) blatant shovelware.

Redeeming Qualities

1. The graphics, while mediocre for a current-gen game, are at least accurate to the show.
2. The game can still be fun for little kids.
3. Despite being annoying, at least the pups do have voice acting in this game unlike On a Roll.
4. It can be considered as an improvement over On a Roll despite still being bad.

Reception

Despite receiving mixed-to-positive reviews from critics, others see it as a cash grab only made to make money due to how popular the series is, much like a lot of other games published by Outright.

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