Bang Bang Racing is like a ham sandwich on plain bread.  It tastes fine.  You’re no longer hungry.  It’s not bad, per se.  It just wasn’t a triple-decker from your local deli, either.

At its core, the game does what it says on the box (or… um… the download screen?).  Your playtime will be spent trying to beat other cars to the finish line, attempting to smash them into oblivion as you do so.  It’s an arcade-style racer, so you’ve got nitro you can use to get speed boosts.  You’ll also have to manage your health bar, as trashed cars are slower and cannot boost as long.

Basic stuff, right?  Hard to mess up?  Well, the core racing gameplay is enjoyable (if one-trick), but the experience is hampered by a force that has felled many greater games before it — the camera.  Whether you set it to ‘fixed’ or ‘follow’, it always gives you a birds-eye view of the action, making it difficult to navigate the track.  What’s the most important thing when playing a racing game?  Being able to see the track in front of you.  Instead, the camera is zoomed in so close that you just barely have enough time to react when a U-turn pops up, which means you and the rails will be spending a lot of time getting acquainted.

This issue is made worse by the fact that, when you start out, you only have one car unlocked.  You have to earn the others by winning races, time trials, or the Elimination mode where the driver in last place is destroyed every ten seconds.  It wouldn’t be such a big problem, except for the fact that the car you get at the beginning can’t take corners to save its life.  It's annoying trying to win a race with something that has the turn radius of a one-legged horse; a problem which could have been alleviated if more than one car was available at the start.

Even in multiplayer, you can only use the cars you’ve unlocked in the single-player modes, meaning you’ll be stuck using the same car if you fire up split-screen when you first turn the game on.  There is no online play.  While there are laughs to be had by speeding around and crashing into your friends, the halved or quartered screen exacerbates the camera problems by letting you see even less of the track.

The single player mode does little to make up for the failings of the multiplayer.  You’ve got what looks like a large variety of content.  However, the challenges constantly repeat, with little variation.  You just won a race at the Kingdom of Bahrain?  Good.  Now do the same thing backwards.  It’s tedious, yet necessary if you want to unlock all the vehicles.

On the bright side, the presentation is pretty.  The cars are cartoony and toy-like, evoking a sense of childlike joy at bashing them together.  The level variety is diverse, ranging from speedways to deserts to tropical paradises, and you feel a sense of intense speed as you fire up your Nitro.  The music is energetic and suits the fast-paced nature of the races.  The biggest achievement here, though, is that there is almost no such thing as a loading time.  Press one button after finishing part of a circuit, and the next level will be loaded instantly.

So, like that plain ol’ ham sandwich, Bang Bang Racing sates the appetite but doesn’t really please the palette.  The core gameplay is fine, but it could have used a little something extra, and it’s more of a holdover until you can find something more satisfying.

This review is based on a digital copy of Bang Bang Racing for XBLA provided by the publisher.