Toybox Turbos (Xbox 360, 2014)

Toybox Turbos
Developed/Published by Codemasters
Released for Xbox 360 (11/14/2014)
Also on PC/PS3
Backwards Compatible on Xbox One

Toybox Turbos comes to us from Codemasters and is the spiritual successor to the classic Micro Machines series. Released in November 2014, this is one of those titles that would have been an XBLA release, but Microsoft stopped using that label around the time the Xbox One came out. Toybox Turbos contains 1000 gamerscore available like most retail titles, as opposed to the 200 or 400 points the old XBLA titles were allotted. Toybox Turbos certainly looks nice, featuring colorful cartoon-like graphics that fit the toy theme perfectly, but let's delve in and see how the gameplay fares.

Toybox Turbos offers up a decent-sized single-player campaign, featuring 7 cups, each of which feature several different types of events. Each cup also uses its own set of cars, which is a good way to make sure the player tries out many of the various vehicles. There are 35 vehicles to collect, with most of them requiring coins that you'll unlock after completing events. The final car in each cup can only be unlocked by defeating the boss in an elimination race, which will be the final event for that cup. The elimination races will be familiar to those who remember the Micro Machines games, where each player starts off with 4 points. When one player overtakes another, the winner gains a point while the loser goes minus one. The 1st one to fill the meter wins the event and in the instance that it drags on too long, it goes into playoff mode where the loser no longer gets points deducted, giving a decent chance for a comeback.

The other events you'll encounter are classic races, overtake, time trial, escape and countdown. The classic races are your standard 3-lap races. Both classic races and elimination events contain Mario Kart inspired power-up pickups that deal out a random item. There are 4 different items including a turbo booster, a hammer, mines and machine gun. These weapons can help or hinder your progress and, for better or worse, add a random element to the events. These are the only 2 events that feature the power-ups, as the others don't involve directly racing an opponent. Overtake events require you to pass as many cars as possible in 3 laps, time trial events challenge you to complete a track under a specific time, escape events have you trying to outrun an impending water mass and countdown has a timer that must be refilled by collecting clocks scattered around the track. Every event besides elimination allows you to earn up to 3 stars for reaching the gold requirement. The elimination events are initially locked until you've earned a certain amount of stars.

In addition the the single-player campaign mode, Toybox Turbos offers both online and local multiplayer for up to 4 players. There are a total of 18 tracks, so you can play for quite a while before you see the same ones. If you've got some buddies to play with, Toybox Turbos can be a mighty good time and is definitely where the game shines the most.

There's definitely a lot to like with Toybox Turbos, but there were a few things that annoyed me a bit while playing through it. The weapon pick ups can be especially annoying, since they add such a random/luck element to the matches, but this is true of any game that contains these. While the game may seem like a cakewalk in the first few cups, the CPU AI will actually get quite challenging on some of the later levels and will no doubt lead to some frustration trying to complete the single-player portion of the game. I've read several people complain about the camera, and while I didn't care for the alternative angles, I found the default camera to work quite well.

In summary, Toybox Turbos features a single-player campaign of decent length and fun multiplayer with both online and local support, making it an easy one to recommend if you like an arcade-style racer with some good, old-school fun. If you're a fan of the old Micro Machines games and somehow missed out on this one, it's still worth going back to play.

Final Verdict: Toybox Turbos is a fun spiritual successor to the Micro Machines games. Featuring awesome multiplayer and a campaign for single-player, this one's easy to recommend to those looking for a good arcade racer.

Purchase Links:
Buy Toybox Turbos - Microsoft Store
Buy Toybox Turbos - Xbox Marketplace

Related Links:
Racing Games - Xbox Overview
Codemasters - Official Site
Toybox Turbos - Metacritic
Toybox Turbos - GameFAQs
Toybox Turbos Achievement Guide - Xbox Achievements
Toybox Turbos - True Achievements