Mad Dash Racing

Cartoon creatures create chaos in Eidos?s exclusive Xbox offering. Should you care?

Remember the PlayStation game Running Wild? No? There?s a good reason?the "funny animals in footraces" genre tends to feel forced. In that tradition, Mad Dash Racing lacks emotional appeal; it?s a character game without likeable characters.

Several furry critters?a wisecracking cat, a crude hog, and a spastic weasel among them?run, jump, climb, swim, and slide their way through colorful fantasy tracks, grabbing power-ups and tackling each other along the way. The bright visuals look colorful and a little weird?sort of what Tim Burton would create if he suddenly became happy. However, animated hijinks deserve looney tunes, not bad-ass, out-of-place techno beats from Fatboy Slim and Crystal Method. The rewardingly varied controls are the game?s best asset; swimming through lakes and scaling dinosaur ribcages adds some enjoyable manual dexterity to the go-forward repetition.

However, for all its shiny visuals and four-player races, Mad Dash Racing elicits nothing more than a noncommittal shrug. The stars are animals without an anima, and as a result, it?s just a rental.

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