Top-down racer Mantis Burn Racing has been out for a little while now, and the devs at VooFoo studios have now unleashed a couple of DLC packs to keep things fresh on the racetrack. Thanks to the devs, I’ve been able to check out both of these. Here are my thoughts on them.

Note that whilst I have my own opinion on the game itself in an earlier review, I’ll be looking at the merit of the DLC packs in their own right.

First up is the Snowbound Pack. For the tasty price of zero pounds and zero pence, this DLC pack adds in a new world to the selection of race environments to enjoy. Four tracks in an arctic environment are part of this pack, which also extends the single-player campaign by 34 events to include the new tracks.

In my initial time with the game, I noted the game’s core mechanic of drifting across the track rally-style to get the best times. The snow environment fits this perfectly, with lots of twisty turns around military sites and arctic mountain ranges. The tracks are relatively more complex than their earlier predecessors, inviting some challenge when entering these for the first time. On the whole, for a free download, it’s an easy sell to add this to your PS4 if you already have the game.

Additionally, it’s worth noting that each track will also have a mirror. So you actually get eight tracks in total to race on. Not bad for a free download!

The second pack released earlier is the Elite Class pack. This adds three new hovercraft vehicles which make of the newly added Elite level of difficulty and class of races. For £1.99 / $2.49, you get not just the three vehicles, but a wholly separate single player campaign dedicated to the Elite class.

The hovercrafts look slick and certainly require a bit more finesse in your control to steer them correctly around corners. They behave more like a normal car in how their steering and thrust operates, but that makes the learning curve a bit more acceptable when dealing with the Elite class. If you think about how the ships in WipEout move, take away the airbrakes and add in drifting, then you’ll have the general picture of how the hovercrafts in Mantis Burn Racing are driven.

I’ve developed a habit recently of comparing the price of DLC packs and small games to common weekly expenditures and today is certainly no exception. For the price of a cup of coffee, you can get yourself an extra slice of gameplay for a half-decent racing game. If you happen to own the game already and enjoyed your time with it, then the Elite pack will be an easy one to consider. But at the very least you will have some free extra tracks to tempt your appetite a bit for the new vehicles.

Mantis Burn Racing is available for PS4, Xbox One and Steam. Thanks to the developers for providing code of the two packs for the purpose of creating this piece.