Coffin Dodgers – Review (PC)
Coffin Dodgers is the newest title from Milky Tea Studios. It is a kart racing title in the vein of Mario Kart and Sonic All Star Racing. Unlike its more triple A peers the big selling point of this title is that the player gets to indulge that most perverse of fantasies, racing the grim reaper in supercharged mobility scooters.
The game is localised around the same area, which looks reminiscent of the South West of England – probably in one of those lazy towns in Cornwall conspicuously populated primarily by old people. The game’s story is basically a quasi-Hunger Games style race to literally outlive your fellow pensioners. Presumably there is some kind of implicit tontine for whoever emerges the sole survivor.
First off, let’s address the obvious graphical quality. It’s not great. Poor edges, along with improperly realised assets. It looks like it was made in about 2004. It seems painfully obvious that aesthetics took a back seat to the game’s mechanics. Certain individual assets look passable, however. It’s a shame because, if the menu screen of the game is to be interpreted correctly, there was an intention to have some much sharper looking models within the title. There’s also certain graphical clipping issues that occur when a player collides with a fence.
The main draw for kart racing titles, compared to traditional racing games, are the power ups, abilities and items that each one comes with. These essentially act as a form of selling point for the racer compared to its competition. For example you think of Mario Kart, you’ll probably think of one of the three types of shell. The abilities should, at least tangentially, relate to the IP and source material – and Coffin Dodgers’ don’t for the most part. Besides a defibrillator, which you can use to stun nearby drivers in a kind of aoe field, none of them really fit with the title’s context. A great example being an overshield which protects the player from harm. However some of the items do have a reasonably decent skill ceiling, the designers clearly rejected the “fire and forget” mentality of a lot of games within the genre. A great example of this would be the rocket, a pair of homing missiles fire at (up to two) targets in front of the player, however they will only trace the target to a point and won’t go around sharp corners, so you want to make sure that you’ll get a guaranteed hit before firing. On top of that each player can use their walking stick (or scythe if you’re playing as the Grim Reaper) to hit the players directly in front of them – something which is devastating when trying to climb your way through the racing pack.
I would argue that the game’s biggest draw is the quirky map design which, unlike the items, sticks religiously around the game’s chosen theme. However it then iterates from that starting point creating a series of interesting levels in and amongst the game’s 13 levels. One example being a race during what appears to be an alien invasion. The map uses this as an excuse to contrive environmental obstacles which knock the various racers out of the way on the track. Another example which, admittedly, crops up on a few levels are the hordes of zombies that you can mow down with your scooter. Presumably the living dead are much more fragile than the likes of George Romero predicted.
At the end of each race, depending on the position you finish you are given a cash lump sum. So, after you complete a series of races you can choose to purchase new content for you vehicle. These range from passive statistical increases, such as a higher top speed. To aesthetic improvements, giving your scooter the Pimp My Ride treatment. These upgrades are quite expensive as far as in-game cash goes so you will not have been able to unlock everything by the end of the ‘story’ mode – or at least I wasn’t, but maybe I’m just bad at games. From what I can tell though, these upgrades appear to be persistent – however as I only bought statistical upgrades I cannot confirm that assertion.
On the whole Coffin Dodgers is a passable kart racing game. It has its own set of drawbacks, mainly regarding graphical quality and the lack of weapon variety. However it has a set of enjoyable maps and while the weapon set is limited there has been some attempts to iterate on what is an otherwise stagnant medium. The focus on much more situational abilities is an example of this.
Pros
– Decent map design
– Less prevalent “Fire and forget” mechanics
Cons
– Poor graphical quality
– Certain abilities feel completely out of context