You know that video (which eventually became a GIF) of the news reporter asking the little boy if he’s going to miss his mum when he starts school? The one where the kid laughs at first, then suddenly realises what’s happening and starts crying? Lawnmower Game: Racing is that video in game form.
In case the title didn’t make it painfully obvious, Lawnmower Game: Racing is a game where you race lawnmowers. Apparently, lawnmower racing is a thing in real life and it looks like fun. This is not based on real-life lawnmower racing, and therefore doesn’t look like fun. And that’s because it isn’t.
Your suspicions may be aroused when you start up the game and realise there’s no title screen, just a screen that says “MENU” in a big white Arial font. Choose the Start option and you’re presented with a barebones list of 22 tracks. “Hey, that sounds like a good selection”, you may be thinking, but having a lot of things isn’t always good. If someone elbowed you in the throat 22 times we doubt you’d thank them for the generous portion size.
The tracks look like they were chucked together in a lunch break. One of them, Farmtown, still shows a development screen in its menu thumbnail, with wireframe boxes around some of the objects. Some of the tracks have grass, which is just a solid green floor. A couple of the tracks are just straight lines. Practically all of them take about 20-30 seconds to clear, except for the last one, which takes around a minute. Take that, Rainbow Road 64.
If the tracks were underwhelming, the vehicles whelm even lower than that. There are four to choose from: a sit-down lawnmower, a slightly bigger one, a small household one you have to push and a street sweeper. That’s right, a game about lawnmower racing could only manage to offer four vehicles and one of them isn’t even a lawnmower. Not that it matters anyway, because they all handle as well as a yacht in a storm.
Every mower is driven by the same bald man. It’s like Jason Statham decided to clone himself three times and instead of making the ultimate four-man action film, he decided to stick them on big Flymos instead and slowly slide along the ground in an unconvincing manner. The guy pushing the handheld mower doesn’t even move his legs, he just hovers across the surface.
As we’ve touched on, the handling is abysmal. Sometimes when you move left or right, your lawnmower (or street sweeper, we suppose) will go left or right. Other times it just decides “nah, I’m the captain now” and doesn’t bother turning, so you smack right into a wall (or, more likely, a tiny piece of scenery) and come to a jarring stop while your three opponents slowly trundle past you.
That’s when they’re working properly, that is. The AI is so bad in this game it should just be called the A. Opponents are just as likely to get stuck in the scenery, miss turns or do full 180-degree turns when you brush against them. It’s like racing against people who have only been given a lawnmower five minutes ago, and also hands.
When you race, your given position might as well have pictures of hamsters in its place, because it has no bearing on your actual position. It's only really accurate when you cross the finish line. If you win a race, well done. Your time is logged and that's it. There are no Grand Prix or career modes or multiplayer modes or anything of the sort: just pick a track, pick a mower, do your 20-second race and go away.
Ultimately, it’s all well and good putting the boot into this shambles but, like the boy in the news video, there comes a time where you have to stop laughing and start getting upset about it. We’re fully aware that there’s a good chance it’s a joke – the Steam version currently has an average user rating of 8/10 – but it’s a rubbish joke, and it’s a joke that costs actual money.
The complete lack of effort here is just insulting: not just to the potential customers who may buy it in good faith expecting a competent racing game, but to the other developers who are already struggling to get noticed in a cramped eShop without tripe like this elbowing its way in and taking up valuable space.
Literally the only positive thing to come from this game is that it should finally stop all the ignorant comments from people who complain when it’s announced that a new game is using the Unity engine. A game’s quality is down to its creators, not its engine, and this has never been proved so perfectly well as when you start up Lawnmower Game: Racing and see a massive Unreal Engine logo. Oh, it’s unreal alright, pal. It’s unreal that we haven’t horsed our Switch against a wall yet while playing this.
Please don’t buy this game, not even ironically. It’s a very real sign of everything that’s wrong with the Switch eShop at the moment and if nonsense like this continues to flood the service you’re going to end up with the console equivalent of Steam, with countless cynical, lazy attempts to fleece money from customers.
Besides, the lawnmowers don’t even mow the grass when you drive over it.
Conclusion
Let's cut (ahem) to the chase – this is one of the worst games on the Switch. Its tracks are ugly and short, its vehicles are laughably unresponsive, its lack of any sort of progression system is an insult and the thing doesn't even have a title screen. Whether it's just a bad joke or a genuinely terrible game, our advice is the same: kick this one into the long grass and forget about it.
Comments 107
Why did Nintendo even allow this to be published on the e-shop?
Day one for me
I think the comments about quality control on the eShop is a serious one. Nintendo needs to find a better way to display games on there especially as more and more people buy digital these days. Yes allowing pretty much any game to appear on the eShop will earn Nintendo a few quid and there is the odd hidden gem BUT in the long run it will damage Nintendo's reputation for quality and mean that good games are overlooked.
That was fun to read
@Smores500 And there lies the problem, the eShop is very quickly hurtling towards the dreadful days of Atari and NES when 99.9% of games were absolute garbage. The eShop is already starting to resemble Blockbuster’s game section (14 copies of Carnival Games for Wii and a rogue Ninjabread Man) and I worry that it’s only getting worse.
I LOVE a good - bad review. It’s wonderfully entertaining to share in the reviewers’ misery. This game gets a 9/10 for unintended entertainment value. I’d like to personally thank the devs for this morning’s chuckle
Nintendo Seal of Quality right there!
Reads more like a 2 😉
No, worst game on switch is Vegas party simply because it doesn't work.
It honestly seems like it could be a good laugh with some friends and a few drinks.
Okay, yes, but is there a physical collector's version?
Haven't had a 1 out of 10 in a while! This game must really be atrocious
Oh wow. That was funny. And sad.
Thanks for the review.
Now on to Mail Mole! Poke that reviewer with a stick (unless there's embargo, which there probalby is.😉)
If it's 60 FPS I'm in, that's all that matters.
I see a missed opportunity to make a King of the Hill racing game
The controls seem atrocious and the lack of general finition is horrible, but some of the environments don't look that bad actually, in a simple lo-poly cartoon kind of way.
You all at NL should be ashamed of yourselves for this review.
Don't you watch your own Youtuber's videos? It is obviously at least a 9/10. Up there with BotW and Odyssey.
Jason Statham for Smash!
@Smores500 this! They should at least allow users to rate games.
Rather play Lawnmower Man on the Super Nintendo!
@samuraicop Anyone who buys a game purely based on its icon without taking a few seconds to actually look at the game itself only have themselves to blame if they end up with garbage.
“Besides, the lawnmowers don’t even mow the grass when you drive over it” - I actually considered buying this game, just for sh*ts and giggles, but after reading this sentence I’ve decided to save my money for some other crappy game. Come on! - it’s a game about lawnmowers and you can’t even cut grass??? Unforgivable!
How much for the collectors edition? $700? $800? I'm buyin
Homescreen icon:
http://www.switchiconshowdown.com/detail.php?id=5309
@nessisonett
They still have a long way down to match Steam/IOS/Android's shops.
I guess the question is how do you stop this? You start 'seals of quality' or whatever metric and then there's good games you miss and folks are mad. You let most the things in then you get this and folks are mad.
Even AAA stuff on the Switch can be hit or miss. Do you not allow a game on the eshop that has framerate/resolution issues? Does N say 'it only goes in if it's as good as Mario Odyssee' or something like that?
It's a minefield.
Nobody made the comment about NintendoLife giving a higher score than other sites and magazines reviewing the same game?
This is a pretty generous score for NintendoLife. 😉
Has anything ever scored 0/10 or is that even technically on the scale?
The eShop is pretty much the console version of what Steam does but worse, why is it worse? Because at least on Steam you can check user reviews. I hate it because it actually screws over those who are making good games and just want to be noticed and sell, sadly i only look to see if the more known games are on sale because i'm not risking spending money on rubbish like this, sometimes just checking the net for thoughts doesn't help because no one has played the damn thing.
I love the Switch but the eShop and allowing stuff like is just one of the reasons i think Nintendo is the most anti-consumer out of the big three. Sony may have its Black Tiger rubbish but at least its only a handful of rubbish, games like this Lawnmower one appear what feels like daily, over 900 games are on sale right now on the eShop yet i bet less then 100 are actually good.
@samuraicop I don't see how any of that is comparable. Buying a product without having any idea what it is is just stupidity. Of course the customer is to blame.
I don't know if it's the same game but years back, I got this for my brother as a gag gift for his birthday. It was on PC and back when Gamestop still sold physical PC games. I even think my brother played it and he said it was stupidly funny. Heh
"The AI is so bad in this game it should just be called the A." Okay, I legit lol'd. I was wondering why NL bothered to review this trash, but I have my answer. Sometimes bad can be just as entertaining as good.
Screw it, I’m gonna get it
Nintendo has gone 180 in quality control from their strict, almost draconian measures when it came to publishing games on the NES to now the wild wild west where anything goes when it comes to the Switch and the eShop.
There are so many great games on the Switch, but the problem is after about a month, many of these great games get lost in the heap of garbage that gets released onto the eShop every week. I'll hear people talk about these great titles and I"m like "oh, that sounds interesting, wish it was on the Switch" only to do some research and see that, yes, it actually is on the Switch, but since it's so buried under thousands of shovelware titles, it gets lost.
The difference between the issue now and the similar issue with the Wii is that with games going more and more digital, and with the barriers of entry lower for the Switch, these titles are now on the eShop, not in the bargain bin at Gamestop or WalMart. Also, because of the Switch's strong third party and indie support, the problem seems less severe, but it is a problem.
Nintendo needs to figure out how to focus on the quality titles and let the hundreds of garbage titles released every month sink to the bottom.
@WallyWest I don't think anti-consumerism means what you think it means if it's being used in this context. I know where you're going with your point but that bit isn't it.
Lawnmower racing is a big thing in the UK.
I don't get the score... You'd think having lawnmowers in the game would warrant at least a 6 or 7, even with the other minor issues. Whatever, can't cancel my preorder now.
For those saying that e-shop reviews would help identify horrible games, I agree with you, but this game has an 8/10 on Steam, as Scullion mentioned. We like to watch garbage burn, and sometimes we like to play with it. Consider how many people are commenting on this review compared to others which are scored better, and there will always be a market for atrocious games.
This review amused me.
Coming up next — a remaster of the amazing Digital Pictures Sega CD masterpieces, the Make My Video tetralogy! Gotta get, gotta, gotta get money...
@Realness
Here's another great abysmal for you.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mB1zWEhgrLs
The problem is not bad games being made or Nintendo allowing them on the eShop - the problem is that people keep buying bad games. The maker of this game will laugh all the way to the bank as more and more people buy it for laughs.
Those comparing this to the situation leading up to the video game crash of 1983 need not worry. People are not spending all their hard-earned cash on bad games assumed to be great (Pac-Man, E.T.), and retailers are not flooded with games that won’t sell. Steam has been flooded with poor games for 15+ years now with no problem.
@Smores500 Why did Nintendo allowed this game to be on the eShop?
Because Sony allowed LIFE OF BLACK TIGER to be on their store. Not only that but their decided to make it the highlight of the entire month when it was 1st released.
Yes, sometimes Ninty will copy Sony.
Still looks better than Mario Kart 8.
Also, this review might possibly have the best opening paragraph to a review in the history of reviews, that was gold.
NINJA APPROVED
@WallyWest User reviews would MASSIVELY improve the Switch, eShop, but that would mean Nintendo would actually have to work on it by hiring a moderation team. They seem to like the “fire and forget” strategy when it comes to anything online related!
NINJA APPROVED
@contrarian Dude... (assuming that you’re a dude) I watched that years ago and rolled. Thanks for bringing that back.
Vroom in the Night Sky would like to say hello.
@1ofUs Collectors edition? It better come with a rideable lawnmower.
NINJA APPROVED
@contrarian Is that the same devs? Heh
NINJA APPROVED
The only good thing here, is that that is a video game...
I guess...
Those positive Steam reviews must be really proud of themselves cause now they could take this dump on the road.
@Realness
One of the greats
@SeantheDon29 Played it. This is worse. At least that had unlockables and charmingly bad dialogue.
@bozz Its anti-consumer in that they allow sh*t like this and with no way of refunding when someone is burnt, yes i wouldn't buy this game even if i never saw the review but a 10 year old might see the game on the shop thinking it will be a fun time and buy it only to find they wasted money on pure trash. The eShop is bogged down with endless trash, with the sales page its hard sometimes just to find a more known game because the endless trash Nintendo freely allow hides it.
Well, it's $5. You get what you pay for, I guess.
Espoo needs some sort of user review system even if it is just a star rating. I know some of these indies are great. But for the lesser known ones it is so hard to tell if it is a hidden gem or it sucks. It sucks mostly but some are good. But would love a review system on the eshop to avoid the bad ones
So still better than Story of Seasons?
@blindsquarel
Eshop not Espoo why did it autocorrect to that
The games is like 4$, it’s a joke, it’s like you buy a bad cup of coffee. I wished you guys will give 1 to EA, for that abomination which is called fifa21. Oh, and for pillars of eternity, where you guys gave a 9 for a mess of a game, where even the developers said that the game is broken beyond any fixes. That sounds like a 1 score.
@WallyWest Again, not anti-consumerism. Making this game available isn't a deterrent for purchasing it.
This review is a work of great literature and should be treated as such, though it reads more like a two than a one. I was delighted to see this get reviewed and hope as much for the other inexplicable lawnmower game, thanks for playing Chris!
I see that we found the new section on the stEamShop
Big Rigs 2: Lawnmower Edition
So it kicks you back to the beginning after every run? Yeah we don't need any more roguelikes. Meh
Is it better than vroom in the night sky though?
@Cikoltan fifa 21 did get a terrible review here. Not 1/10 terrible, but rightfully scathing.
They must have seen RGT 85 video yesterday.
https://youtu.be/Hzlb9lw3AP0
"The complete lack of effort here is just insulting: not just to the potential customers who may buy it in good faith expecting a competent racing game, but to the other developers who are already struggling to get noticed in a cramped eShop without tripe like this elbowing its way in and taking up valuable space."
It's quite ironic that you would write this in the article about such a clearly abysmal game and therefore draw more attention to it when it really doesn't deserve it.
This is just like all those terrible games on Steam where some chancer got a Unity demo, maybe swapped out a few of the assets for other free ones, and put it up for sale. Except $5 is ten times more than the Steam games cost. ***** the switch e-shop for giving this dreck a platform.
@Scrubicius It takes more than a day to write a review, to be fair!
@Cikoltan A bad cup of coffee might still accomplish the job of waking you up though.
Yeah, this and the other lawnmower "game" are an offense to humanity and should be purged from the eShop immediately, along with banning the jokers who published it from ever doing so again. If anybody was foolish enough to buy this crap, Nintendo should apologize and refund them in full.
There are some truly phenomenal 3rd-party games on the eShop that deserve everyone's attention. The rest is garbage like this that just clogs the store and hides all the gems. Nintendo really needs to reintroduce at least a bare-bones policy requiring some minimum level of quality control, or this is just going to continue to happen and people will get fed-up with it.
We're rapidly approaching another video games crash at this rate, people, and that's not a situation we want to encourage.
I love that resolution and frame rate aren't mentioned in the review and no one calls @scully1888 out for it. There is still hope in this world. I had a good laugh at this review. Thank you.
If you want to lawn mower race get Wreckfest on PS, XB or PC.
AVGN episode
Here's hoping they release some DLC for it where you can use a weed wacker as some sort of weapon. I'd call it "Start Your Wacking!" DLC.
I'd like a ten minute GameGrumps episode of them playing this game.
@Smores500 When the NES launched, the "Seal of Quality" was expressly created to stop the bloat of poorly designed trash games that were threatening the industry.
They might want to reflect on that.
Long gone is the Nintendo seal of quality, eshop is infected with a ocean of crap.
@suikoden Honestly you only see these kind of games on the Switch and mobile phones, Nintendo is just as bad as the mobile phone stores these days only worse because everything is more expensive.
Nicely written!
Looks like a 3 month part time it school unity project, from 0 to 3D modeling and learning how to unity
In my 6 years of reading this site, this is the first 1/10 I think I've ever seen. Quite an accomplishment; the developers should be proud.
You may not have intended this, but you just sold this game to me. Purchased!
Time for a new Hover Bovver I think.
Time to GameStop this bad boy right to the #1 spot on the top 30 most downloaded games!
@Crockin : That would be one damn fine game, I tell you h'what.
Funnily enough, they did make a King of the Hill game back in the day for PC, but it seemed to be something of a point-and-click/mini-game collection. I'd love to own a boxed copy of the game if I can ever find one (there was also a Daria game or two as well). I was lucky enough to find a brand new copy of the soundtrack CD recently. The selection wasn't great though. They really should have had Life In A Northern Town on there, and what I wouldn't give for their version of Blue Moon of Kentucky.
I think the important question is when is Littlewood coming to the uk eshop? Xxx
Damn I was really looking forward to this too, I guess it's back to Garfield Kart for me.
Releases like this are the biggest downfall of the Switch for me. The eshop has turned in to a rubbish dump. More crap to filter through when browsing..
@ekarammg They truly need to overhaul the UI to help people sort through all the games considering how much shovelware there is to sift through.
@AbejaGrande "You may not have intended this, but you just sold this game to me. Purchased!"
Someone call a priest! This person's clearly demon possessed.
Haha, this was an awesomely hilarious review. And then the score at the end sealed the deal.
@Silly_G haha I owned that king of the hill game
@Crockin : Past tense? Nnnnoooo!
Never played it, but I'd like to believe "Jimmy Johnson's anything with an engine" is a wayyy better game. Anyone actually interested in similarly fun antics might want to check it out. On ps3, maybe other consoles idk.
@scully1888 sure for Nintendo Life and RGT 85. 😃
I hope I didn’t strike a nerve. 🤔 😂
So abysmal, famitsu only gave it 7/10 😆👍
Wow, this game either had an extremely small budget, or it was made by a few guys fresh out of college who thought, "Hey, I bet we can make our own video game and sell it on the Switch" and then somehow actually managed to become Nintendo approved developers. Wasn't the tightening of indie credentials supposed to prevent half-a**ed shovelware made in someone's basement like this from getting on the e-Shop?
Meanwhile, you guys must've taken one look at the screenshots and known you could make one of your sarcastically humorous flame reviews, as there is no other reason for you to pick this game to give a full review.
@BloodNinja Then why don't they just implement a star rating system like they have on the Wii U and 3DS eShops?
Sometimes, Nintendo's UI efforts and some other kinds of secondary mechanics go backwards in the strangest ways. The 3DS has folders (as does the Wii U), themes, and built-in save data backups? Nope, the Switch doesn't need any of that. The Wii U has a decent eShop UI and lets you play and upgrade your previous Virtual Console purchases for a nominal price, as well as being able to buy and play certain Genesis, N64, and DS games? Nope, not gonna happen on Switch. The 3DS and Wii U both have consumer-friendly memory management? The Switch ain't havin' any of that.
@Muddy_4_Ever No, the Seal of Quality was created to ensure that developers had to pay Nintendo a licensing fee if they wanted their games on the Famicom/NES (although a few developers managed to work around it). It had little to nothing to do with actual quality control.
@BulbasaurusRex Yeah, I hate how inconsistent the Switch is, in terms of usability, when compared to some of their other consoles. Even the Wii U had folders, for christ sake
FOLDER NINJA APPROVED
@BulbasaurusRex It absolutely had the effect of quality control. You're right, Nintendo didn't directly do quality assurance... but the rationing of titles that received the seal caused developers to be selective about releases. It was a direct response to the crash of '83.
@Muddy_4_Ever I guess that's a fair point, but I think the bigger response to the crash was Nintendo themselves making high quality games, when then caused many 3rd party developers to then put in more effort if they wanted decent or better sales compared to the 1st party titles. Aside from that, others had simply learned their lesson that cheap and rushed cash-grabs were toxic to the industry.
It doesn't even cut the grass?!?
That is honestly the only thing I was halfway interested in this thing for.
I personally made a mobile game in Unity where you can cut the grass as a mini-game. Here's me thinking that these guys beat me to the punch in capitalising in the idea on the e-shop. Ah well, I guess I still have a chance...
Another one that slipped through the quality control net.
Is it possible to get good at this game if you practice it a lot?
I am thinking of trying to promote this game to help make Switch fail as a protest against Nintendo's shutdown of the Wii U / 3DS E-Shop, but I still need the game to be competent.
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