Played The Great Space Race tonight, the one lines summary told to me: "Robo-Rally meets Mario Kart."
Not bad, as those things go. You pick a number of laps, each turn you randomize order, get some shields back and set speeds (accelerate by 1, stay the same, or slow by 1 or 2). Each player draws 3-5 cards (based on speed). Players reveal random events (usually "Take That" on the player of their choice) and refill. The remaing cards are moves, recharge shields, or draw random equipment. You play cards equal to your speed (1-5), which sets the slots you place your moves in (speed 1 places a move in slot 3, Speed two uses slots 2 & 4, etc). The moves are more complex than Robo-Rally. Some moves are just '5 Ahead" but others can be complicated by optional turns in the middle of the move, and allow for some decisions later on.
If you end on other ships (or mines, planets, etc), you roll to see if you collide and roll again for damage. Damage first destroys shields (which have up to 10 points) then hull (6). Run out of hull and ka-boom! You're out, and may damage nearby ships.
Each player also starts with a few command points, which can be spent to make an emergency turn, automatically avoid an impact check, draw more cards, or re-arrenge them in mid-turn.
So you race around the (vaguely oval) track, dropping mines and usinq equipment. Good, chaotic fun. In theory.
Actually, I enjoyed it. My problem -- it isn't chaotic enough, and the leaders should be in more danger. Every ship has mines, but nobody has lasers! Bizarre. Also, the events happen before you plot movement. It would be nice if they occured during movement. The mild 'take that' events are nice, and there are two "Draw from the major event deck" cards, so even though you'll cycle through the deck a few times per race, you'll only get a few major events. This game we had gamma rays (all shields were turned off!), a space amoeba (which wanders around the board and sucks shields away), space goats (which 'head butt' all ships). Cute. The "Get random equipment" cards mean that you draw from another deck, so those vary extensively. You'll see planetoids and wormholes each game, which is fine.
Because this is an 'experience' game, the additional two decks provide decent replayability; you'll only see some of them each game. Also, there are 8 different ships, each with a special ability. So that's nice, too. There are only 6 ship models, but there are also counters for each ship, so you could play with 8 in theory. (If you made initiative markers numbered 1-8).
Component quality is nice, with plastic space ships, plenty of counters (single sided, unfortunately). Sadly, one or two charts and rules are misprinted on the board. Player aids would help.
Other problems: well, some cards are better than others. In a silly game, that's not horrible. A ship at speed five with a good hand of cards can cover 1/3rd a lap (or more, with wormholes). A runaway leader is possible ... so there should be lasers for trailing players to use. You can ram each other, which hurts both ships and slows down the rammee, which causes their last card to be discarded! But if someone is 2-3 moves ahead (easy enough), then it's impractical to ram them. A two lap race took about 90 minutes, and forces the leaders to deal with mines on the second lap, at least. But you can play more laps. I thought everyone would survive our game, but near the end a well placed nuke killed one ship (which splatted another). Players can turn around to just try to kill each other, which may work. There is player elimination, which is fine by me.
This MSRPs for $50, but you can get it for $33 online. I'm in no rush to buy, but I'd consider trading for it. OK if you are in the right mood.
I've posted a list of variants at the geek.
Update: Wow. That's what I get for typing at midnight. Cleaned up a bunch of typos (probably missed more). Also, my review echoes Tom Vasel's. He even mentions most of the same major events. I must have read it last month, but I didn't remember it.