Top critical review
2.0 out of 5 starsDefective car, mediocre performance.
Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2017
One car failed within the first hour. At first it was slightly slower than the other car. It got gradually slower as we played with it to the point it was running at half the speed of the good car. I assumed it was the batteries, but it was still slow after replacement with fresh batteries. For a final test, I swapped batteries with the good car and swapped controllers... the slow car was still slow. It's defective. I've emailed Mattel customer support to see if they will swap out the car so I don't have to mail back the whole set.
Beyond that issue...
The set has been reasonably fun the play with. It's cool that you can redesign the track and fun to run time trials around the course. I haven't got to play in "championship race mode" because of the broken car, so can't comment on that.
My biggest complaint about how it plays is the steering. The cars automatically follow the track, but you also have a stick to steer/guide the car while it's following the track. This steering, however, is almost completely ineffective. For example, if your going down a straightaway, the car will automatically drive down the center of the course. If there is a vehicle in front of you and you want to go around, you should, of course be able to use the steering to do so... I would expect that if I hold the stick to the left, the car would drive toward the left enough to go around the other car. Instead what happens is the car twitches momentarily to the left, then immediately tries to recenter itself on the track, even if I'm still holding the stick to the left. It makes passing an exercise in banging the cars together, getting the rims stuck against each other, etc.
The system would be a lot more fun with a bit more refinement. As is, even if I didn't get a defective car, I would recommend you don't buy, except at a highly discounted price.
