The world of Smurf Racer is quite vibrant. Mind you, it's not particularly detailed -- the camera angle is low enough that you never really get a good look at the environments that you're racing in -- but what you see is quite bright and colourful, much like the cartoon show we all knew and loved. The vehicle models, on the other hand, are simple to a fault. Tiny and unremarkable, there's really nothing to differentiate between the various racers. The fact that everyone's 'secret weapon' does the same thing doesn't help to remedy this situation. But the framerate never drops when running the game, which is nice.

There are only a couple of FMVs in the game, and none of them are memorable -- think low-quality versions of what you used to see in the show. Yeah.

And perhaps the greatest travesty in Smurf Racer comes with the sound. The music doesn't have the Smurf feel, the single voice actor in the game (Brainy Smurf) sounds absolutely nothing like he did in the show, and there's not even the freaking theme song. I'll still be able to 'fa la la la la la' on my deathbed, but Smurf Racer doesn't even give that little nod to its heritage. Bah.

That's not to say that Smurf Racer is all that entertaining when it comes to actually playing the game. It amounts to perhaps the most boring kart racing game I've ever played on the PSX, with absolutely nothing new to offer to the genre and even quite a few steps back for the formula.

The core game mode is the Championship, where you race through ten different courses with a single racer. Every batch of three has a different setting (village, castle, and . . . mixed, along with the last space level), and you have to race the three tracks in order. You also have to pick your racer, all of whom you'll recognize if you ever watched the show. Papa Smurf, Smurfette, Harmony . . . they're all there.

The problem comes when you actually start to play the game. There are precisely two weapons in the game -- a missile that fires forward, which everyone has, and a 'secret weapon' that fires backwards. Everyone's is different, mind you (Papa throws magic potions, Harmony throws notes, Painter throws paint) but they all do precisely the same thing. Whee.

Besides the ammo for those two weapons, you can find invincibility potions and boosts on the track.

And that's it.

There are only four racers at a time, which makes for a very dull last lap, as usually you're so far ahead of them that you never even get attacked while you're racing. The Expert mode tries to make it a little challenging by forcing you to cross checkpoints within a certain amount of time to get your car wound back up, but it ends up being moot. I never lost a single race when I played the game to completion.

The worst part about the game is the length of the tracks. The first few are nice and short, but the last set of tracks are so ungodly long that you'll be wishing that the game were over by the time you get done with the first lap -- and then you realize you have to do two more circuits. Even though the graphics are nice, the tracks look self-similar, so you'll find yourself not much caring about how far along you are, just wanting to do your three laps so you can get on to the next one.

I beat the entire game in forty-five minutes, and it only took another forty to beat it again in Expert mode.

You unlock four characters by racing the ten tracks, but do you really expect them to make the game any better? There's a two-player mode, and you can do flag races, but there are much better two-player kart racers out there.

Hah. You can pick between Easy and Expert, but the only real difference between the two is the fact that the expert mode has timed checkpoints. I didn't even notice that I was being timed until halfway through the expert mode. The weapons do almost nothing with respect to slowing your opponents down, but they always manage to stick you against annoying walls. Nonetheless, as I said earlier I didn't lose a single race my entire time of playing the game. And while I understand that the game is aimed towards children (which is a mistake, to be honest -- my generation is ten times more fond of The Smurfs), there's a line between 'easy' and 'stupidly easy' that Smurf Racer crosses.

Steer, fire your two weapons, brake, jump, honk. The last three are completely useless in the game, and you can't powerslide, which makes a certain section of track in one of the castle levels an exercise in slamming into the walls. Don't worry -- the AI slams into them too. Whee. The AI also cheats like crazy, passing you up when their vehicles go the same speed as yours. Yeah. Despite that, you shouldn't have problems winning every race. Steering is somewhat responsive, but nowhere near as fine as it should have been. Don't bother with the analog stick. The menus are easy enough to navigate -- now if only that so-called Brainy weren't there to narrate them.

PS2: The load times in Smurf Racer are pretty minimal, and the PS2 shrinks them even more with Fast disc speed. The Smooth graphics option makes the game look a little nicer, but you'll get the lines around the sprites that comprise the menus and the HUD. The PS2 also corrupts the loading screen between the races, but it's only there for a few seconds, and doesn't show you anything particularly useful.

While I understand the motivation behind budget titles -- USD9.99 will net you Smurf Racer -- there still needs to be some degree of quality entertainment behind the game. Alas, there really isn't here. It may be entertaining for the first few minutes, but before you know it, you'll have beaten the game on both difficulty levels, there'll be nothing left to explore or do, and you'll turn back to the other, higher-quality kart racing games in your collection. Many of those go for near Smurf Racer's price now, and there aren't many that won't give you more bang for your buck. Complete Smurf freaks and those who simply must have every kart racer known to man may want to check out Smurf Racer, but everyone else should find a better way to spend their money.