What Nickelodeon Kart Racers 2: Grand Prix is
This is an arcade kart racer built around Nickelodeon's characters. You pick from 30 playable racers and 70 team members, then race across a variety of Slime-filled tracks while competing for cups and collecting over 80 upgrades for your kart. The roster pulls from across the channel's history: JoJo Siwa, SpongeBob SquarePants, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the babies from Rugrats, the kids from Hey Arnold!, Ren and Stimpy, Lincoln Loud and his sisters, and more. The game runs on a new and improved racing engine, and the racing sits alongside combat-style kart action, so expect to trade hits as well as trade places.
Building your pit crew
The crew system is the layer that sits on top of the driving. Each of the 70 crew members carries a unique power, and you assemble a crew to push your level of attack, defense, or fun higher. With 100 characters split between racers and crew, the game counts tens of thousands of different all-star combinations, so there's real room to experiment with setups rather than settling on one loadout. Pick a racer you like, then build the crew around how you want to race.
Playing together
You can race against friends in two ways. Local multiplayer supports up to 4 players in the same room, and a controller is required for the local multiplayer modes. Online multiplayer supports up to 8 players. Beyond standard races to the finish line, there are local arena multiplayer challenges with their own wild objectives, so a group can switch between track racing and arena rounds depending on the mood.
Before you start
Know that the crew choice matters as much as the driving, so spend a few races testing different combinations before committing to one. Cup races are where the kart upgrades come from, so working through the series of races pays off in the garage. If your group is playing on one screen, make sure everyone has a controller ready, since local multiplayer won't run without them.