To maintain the current status of a given player, we are encouraged by Anki to set up an account on their servers. Complicated isn’t it? The skill comes when the player is familiar with the best utilities for a given contender. This is very similar conceptually to developing a personalised avatar in an online console gaming scenario.Īs a feature or weapon is deployed during a race, the Anki Overdrive cars flash and beep – if the enemy car is within range and in the correct position, it will be affected by the attack in a manner depending on the weapon used – slowing down for example. Basically you grow your profile and vehicle over time with various addons which are made available as the player climbs the ranks by winning races. This is a very novel and unique ability on Anki Overdrive and is essentially one of the strong selling points of the kit. A fixed number of “upgrades” can be installed or activated on a vehicle per race, allowing the competitor to customize their car with features best suited to battle their competitor. An example of this is a grapple line which particularly impressed my 9 year old, allowing him to fire on the opponent, drag his car back towards him and then “blast” him with another weapon. Each car has the ability to gain new features and weapons via an app which steps the driver through a series of bot match type races which when won, unlocks the next gizmo. The cars themselves are stylish futuristic battle machines – not the traditional formula 1 type super charged turbo grand prix format we are familiar with. A flashing light on top of each car becomes stable when ready. The cars slot onto this and have a small internal rechargeable battery – which only takes around 10 minutes to reach full capacity. With Anki Overdrive the starter kit comes with a charger as shown below. This means a trailing cable running from the wall to the track which is ALWAYS in the way. ![]() You’ll already be aware that most racing games which are mains powered apply electricity directly to the tracks via a transformer connected to the 240v mains. Other racing kits would have the problem of continually having to reset the cars into a slot when they crash – Anki seem to have found a technical way of getting round this to a large extent with the cars just sticking on the bends.Ī fairly interesting sideline here, the pack comes with four different mains power plug connectors, the product must be truly popular around the world! So where ever you are reading this review, you can be confident that plugging in your Anki Starter Kit won’t be a major problem! Notice that there are no track side impact barriers to prevent the cars from spinning off the raceway, they are extremely firm on the track even round corners at higher speeds and rarely come off. You can see the two small silver coloured magnets below – one on each side of the end section of track.Īs an example, a track can be built and ready to race in less than 2 minutes, so players can choose at any point to re-design the layout and start racing on a different shaped circuit without spending half an hour thinking about it. This also makes it very easy to dismantle the track aswell as construct it. Anki Overdrive tracks don’t actually slot together as such using clips, they have small but powerful magnets which attract each other and hold the sections firmly in place. In addition, it only takes a matter of minutes to set up and get racing, other kits can take a long time due to the way the smaller track pieces fit together (there are more sections as they are smaller) with various clipping mechanisms. When you open up the box, you don’t actually get to see very much, that’s because there isn’t much needed, but that isn’t a downside really, more to the point I would say that this is one racing game whereby the minimal number of parts and wires is great as it makes for far less clutter and fewer bits for the kids to lose or stand on and break. The two cool looking cars are on show in a cut-out window, one blue and one red and they go by the name of “Ground Shock” and “Skull”. ![]() The game comes neatly packaged in a large box as below. For now – lets take a look what Anki Overdrive actually is, and what it can do. ![]() I will look into this aspect a bit further down. The new racing game Anki Overdrive comes packaged in a starter kit, it seems to be the ideal car game aimed at kids and if i’m honest, adults aswell – especially those of us who used to play scalextric sets when we were younger.įor many, the opinion appears to be that the Anki Overdrive starter kit is a bit pricey for a kids toy, over in the UK for example, the starter kit comes in at around £150 on Amazon, for this you get a basic track setup, two cars and all the other components you need to start racing – except for one major thing – a controller for each car.
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