Coffin Dodgers
bringing kart racers to life
Coffin Dodgers is a kart racer than can be played either single player or split screen
this game consists of 8 characters, a story mode, an explore mode, and a crazy grandad mode.
Crazy grandad is all about collecting items as fast as you can for a highscore, explore mode which can also be played split screen is essentially aa hub world where you can drive to the different events you unlock as you play through the story mode…
The story mode tells the tale of 7 old people who agree they are too young to die so they challenge the grim reaper to a race for their souls.. He agrees…
To keep your soul you have to finish in the top 3 overall in each location.
There are 4 locations and a 5th showdown location that mixes the first 4 into one giant race..
The 4 locations consist of 3 races each…
These races are 4 laps and take about 4 minutes each to complete, so youre looking at about a 1 hour long story.
These races are actually more about xp than they are winning…
In kart racing fashion there are mystery boxes laying around the course for item pick ups, and you can also hit other racers with your cane, or umbrella, or whatever other weapon you unlock as you progress..
You unlock items with this xp because xp earned from taking enemies out converts into coins at the end of the race..
You can use these coins to upgrade the body of your kart, its acceleration, your combat weapon, paint, the amount of items you can pick up, as well as your engine…
And honestly I think having a system like this in play rather than stat specific racers is a huge mistake…
Giving no stats to the characters takes all the life out of them, pun not intended…
But this is fine.. this allows you to grind levels to upgrade your kart if a race is giving you trouble, and many will..
Because unfortunately this kart racer is more luck based than it is skill based…
Its way too easy to be knocked out of first place into last…
it feels cheap and unfair to hold the lead up until the last lap and a rocket ruins this for you… there is no way to counter items…
and if you get hit by a car or get taken out by another racers you lose all items you’ve picked up which makes a first to last place situation feel even more cheap..
at the very least let me keep my items to try and climb back on top…
Other than the lifeless characters and cheap gameplay aspects of this game,
I found coffin dodgers to be insanely goofy fun, the levels are varied and awesomely designed.
I give Coffin Dodgers
a 7.0/10
Dull, trivial and full of questionable design choices and technical problems. Its dark and nonsense humour may be very amusing, but otherwise escape Coffin Dodgers as it was Death itself.
Coffin Dodgers fails in all possible ways: gameplay, game modes, tracks… Its nonexistent variety and its simple gameplay are the burdens of a game that had good potential.
Overall, this game is not good. Do not waste your time, or your money. If Milky Tea want to make another racing game, they have a lot to work on before they will interest me again. It is up to you whether you let it tarnish your PS4, but in my case, I have already deleted the game off of my game library.
Maybe it comes down to how easy and accessible Coffin Dodgers is as a racer, but there’s definitely something that’s clicked with me. Even so, it’s a disappointing effort overall, but Coffin Dodgers may prove to be a guilty pleasure of sorts for a small minority.
Coffin Dodgers is a decent Kart Racer that leans on its premise to make itself stand out. It’s hard to imagine this game having a long term following, but it’s good for a quick laugh or two with friends. The game doesn’t take itself too seriously, which is a nice change of pace from a lot of games that demand an emotional investment.
There are some funky issues with collision detection and a couple of easy spots to get yourself stuck on, but for $12 ($11 on PC), it’s a nice option for PS4 and Xbox One owners looking for some casual Kart racing fun.
Surprisingly I did not encounter any bugs or glitches in this game. Some performance issues with the game stalling for a couple seconds in the after-race screens, and a slight drop in frame rate here and there during races, but overall a solidly built game from a technical standpoint. That's pretty much the only thing good about this game, and the only reason i gave it a 2 instead of a 1.
The difficulty spikes in this game are incredibly massive and quite frequent, with some races being won 5 miles ahead of 2nd place, and others requiring 4 or 5 retries before finally getting 1st place. Controlling your kart is quite difficult, as the control input has some minor lag and not enough sensitivity, on top of the controls themselves being quite loose, sluggish and overcompensating. For example, turning: it takes about a second for your kart to start turning after you make the input, where most driving games take a couple milliseconds, and the turn starts real slight and suddenly shifts to a hard turn. This takes a while to getting used to, and can often cause you to hit walls or to slow down too much and over turn. Bumping into walls at moderate speeds causes you to bounce really far backwards, and your kart takes a couple precious seconds to start up again. If you crash or get hit with a weapon, it takes a whopping 7 seconds to respawn, and another 2-3 seconds to get going again once you're back in. So if you're barely in first place and wipeout somehow, you end up all the way back in 5th place. This, combined with mediocre track design and some BS obstacles that can only be avoided if you know they're there because they're around tight corners, make the game artificially difficult, and ends up being an aggravating experience. There's quite a difference between difficult and straight-up BS.
The weapons in the game are decent. There's the EMP which negates any weapon you have and slows you down a little, the Rockets which fire two homing missiles at up to 2 targets, the Shield which seems to constantly be obtained when you don't need it and never when you do, and the Uzi which is by far the worst weapon in the game. Minuscule damage and non-existent accuracy force you to literally be right up on another racer's bumper in order to hit them with Uzi rounds, and even then most of them miss. The other power up in the game is the boost, which only lasts about 2 seconds and you can't use any weapons while boosting, making it more useless than helpful. Pressing or holding Circle allows you to melee other racers with a cane or equivalent, but even fully upgraded, the damage it does and the range it has is so small, it's barely worth using. Weapons obtained from the power up boxes aren't balanced either, so if you're in 1st place, most of the time you will get rockets or Uzis, which serve no purpose there, and if you're in last place, you can often get oil cans or shields, which also serve no purpose there.
For game modes, there's Story Mode, which consists of 13 races across 5 themed areas. 99% of your time will be spent here. You need to complete the story mode once as any of the Oldies, and then again as the Grim Reaper. Crazy Grandad requires you to collect items before the time runs out. That game mode is one that probably will only be played just for the trophy, as it's not really that fun and gets boring immediately. Time attack is another mode that probably won't get played, unless you want an easy way to do the Skater and Biker trophies. Time attack usually is good for practicing and getting to know tracks, but you don't get any coins like in Story Mode, and there's no progression system either, which makes Time Attack a waste of time. Explore mode does absolutely nothing, it's just free roam. There's no point.
The game costs $11.99, and its actual value is probably around $3.99-4.99. Any more than that is a waste of money, even for the trophies. This platinum is short, only about 3 hours, but it's quite an aggravating and rage-inducing game.
SummaryCoffin Dodgers sees you take on the role of saving 1 of 7 old retirees, each racing for their soul on "pimped up" mobility scooters against the Grim Reaper and his Zombie army.