Journal

I don't know how to blog / 09 July 2026

I liked the idea of having a blog I can post to, but I don't know how to do it properly. I don't know how to make websites in general so I'm just copying and pasting HTML which is stupid but I don't know any better. That said I don't know how to write either, but it's probably good for me to at least try and ramble some words out onto a page.

Toy Story Racer

Travellers Tales / PlayStation / 2001

Anyway, I recently watched Toy Story 5 and I have been playing Toy Story Racer lately. It's a kart racing game from 2001 and leans into its mascots. You start out with Woody, Buzz, R.C. and Bo Peep, and after a few hours of play you eventually unlock extra characters. Slinky Dog, Rex and Hamm are my favourites.

Slinky Dog is cute. He looks very smug. Rex is cute too. It feels bad to hit him and upset him.

I have a lot of good things to say about Toy Story Racer, but all of them have the caveat of the game being too long. Toy Story Racer draws you in at first with its cute mascots and charming presentation. It quickly devolves into an absolute SLOG. Everything that Toy Story Racer needs to be a recommendation is here. The characters are cute, the handling lets you slide the karts around, and the tracks are pretty and they included a lot of fun human-sized places for the little toys to race around. Andy's House, Pizza Planet and an arcade are my favourites. But for seemingly no reason, it was decided that instead of being a short, fun and varied kart racer, they were going to stretch a 1-2 hour game into a 10+ hour drag. Any fun you'd have with the game will dry up after a couple hours of the same repeating events, only for the occasional new tidbit of gameplay or new character to be sprinkled in at the 6 hour mark. There are over 200 challenges, with each "challenge" often being tournaments that bring the total to at least 300. It would have been so simple for them to have not done that, and I'll never understand why they did.

I think it is worth playing as something you can chip away at in short sessions. But if it would bug you to start playing a game and leave it unfinished it's better left untouched.

Thanks for reading my blog.