Sound:  
There isn’t a whole lot that makes up the sound package. You’ll get the revving of the motors, a few tinny sound bytes here and there, and some crashing sounds when you get iced by a weapon. There’s some music behind the title screen, and may be something from the movie, but I wouldn’t know for a multitude of reasons.

1.)I haven’t seen the movie.

2.)Well, actually, I just haven’t seen the movie, so there’s only one reason.

It’s a basic sound package put together, and maybe enjoyable to fans of the movie, if the tunes happen to be from the movie, which I can’t assure you they are. Nothing too impressive here.

Gameplay:  
Now this is where the game really starts to… really try to be Mario Kart yet again. You race through a series of races, attempting to win and advance. It doesn’t seem to be laid out in “circuits” like Mario Kart is, (Wonder which member of the development team overlooked that this aspect wasn’t exactly like Mario Kart? That person has likely been fired for this blatant oversight.) but sends you through a number of races on various courses. There are races on grainy swamp backgrounds, grainy log type road backgrounds, grainy road backgrounds, and so on. It’s actually a smorgasbord of grainy race backgrounds, so you grainy racing background enthusiasts can be thoroughly satisfied.

The races themselves are about the ideal length, which is to say, they are pretty short. And in this case, short is a good thing, because it means I can stop playing the game sooner. You race against 7 other carts, which you can outfit with power-ups along the course, such as weapons, like pumpkins, which can be shot at your opponents. The pumpkins are even considerate enough to circle around your cart three at a time. (Sound familiar?) For the most part, I found it hard to even get the power-ups intentionally, because they pretty much can’t be seen on the track until you run over them. It can be bothersome, because apparently the power-ups can turn into things that cause problems for you, by doing fun things like reversing your controls or putting your driver to sleep so that he just keeps rolling straight ahead for an impossible amount of time.

Of course, this kind of fun can only be topped by the sheer enjoyment of getting stuck indefinitely in the side of the racetrack, which tends to happen WAAAAY too often. I’m going to approximate that I got stuck in the side of the track once every 5 races or so, which is ridiculous. How something as annoying and infuriating as this slipped past the Quality Assurance team (which I’m guessing consisted of either monkeys or blind folks, if, in fact, there even WAS a QA team that worked on this game) is beyond me.

Shrek Kart attempts to be Mario Kart in almost every way imaginable, but the execution of the gameplay leaves a lot to be desired. Just little things, like being able to know you’ll finish the race every time you start it, and not have to shut off your system to get out of the grasp of what is apparently a bush with a very intense grip. In all, it’s another attempt to match a great series with a half-assed attempt to imitate and a product with name association slapped on it, and doesn’t fill the shoes it needs to.

Control:
The controls are standard. A is your gas, B is the brake. R hops your cart, and L uses your item if you have one. Start pauses, and Select, ummm, doesn’t do anything that I can think of. Wait a minute! Maybe hitting Select causes the game to go into “Good” Mode instead of “Terrible” Mode. I didn’t try that. Just a sec, I’ll go check. [Few seconds elapse] Nope, I gave it a shot, and even trying that didn’t make it good.

Multiplayer:
I’m assuming that there are multiplayer options in the game, but I had neither another person to play with, nor the desire to play the game any more than the bare minimum necessary to put together a suitable review for it. You can probably race against other people if you wanted though, which would be perfect if you wanted to show the maximum number of people the true crappiness of this game in the shortest amount of time possible. Joy!

OVERALL:
I’m not sure which aspect of the game is most annoying: getting stuck in the track constantly, the fact that it attempts to be Mario Kart so badly and falls short in nearly every way, or simply that it just isn’t that fun. This really falls under the category of “blatant use of a license in an attempt to sell a shoddily-made product”. I’m not usually one that likes games that fall in this category, and this game isn’t going to be the one to change my mind. Perhaps if Mario Kart had not been released for the GBA yet, and I had never played video games before, and I were deprived of all five senses, I may have thought this was a respectable game. Seeing as none of those are the case, I have to give this one a hearty vote of no approval, and hope that more games in this category don’t keep pouring in. Here’s hoping that Shrek Golf and Tennis are NOT on the way, because I will not be held responsible for my actions if they see the light of day.

 

The Lowdown on  Shrek Swamp Kart Speedway Aesthetics: Below Average Control: Average Gameplay: Terrible Multiplayer: Below Average Sound: Below Average Innovation: 1/6 Lasting Appeal: 1/6 Overall: Below Average! "Has Some Detrimental Problems"